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LP
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STSLJN 434LP
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$29.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/4/2025
Grey Interiors was made in collaboration with Actual Objects and is an absorbing animation and navigation of those post-human ideals that have prompted Darren J. Cunningham to his best work across the preceding two decades. In its hypnagogic symphony of the elements, he short-circuits distinctions of classical music's metric freedoms and the hyperspatial sensuality of concrète/electro-acoustic and ambient music with an artistic license that has come to distinguish his work in the contemporary field, and arguably identified him as this generation's most vital electronic abstractionist. The first half of the album is bewitchingly airless, materialized in a twinkling vacuum. Naturalistic environmental recordings and a half-heard piano swirl around nauseous airlock whooshes and eerie bass drones. It's all pulverized to a powdery, shimmering residue; if Actress's music is defined by its character and texture -- that sweet spot between the bedroom and the soundsystem -- then this one advances the narrative without losing its backbone. And like a lot of his best work, it comes into its own on the back of zonked eyelids, conjuring a play of shifting geometric patterns within its imaginary physics and nuanced narration of ephemeral melodic phrasing and vaporous textures. At about the halfway point, that dissociated piano finds its groove, coalescing into a jerky drum machine rhythm popping like bubbles in the stifling atmosphere. Listeners can draw some intersecting lines here thru electronic music lore -- traces of vintage AE, Push Button Objects, UR -- but Actress always leaves an indelible fingerprint on anything he touches. Even when he's rubbing against the gallery-industrial complex, he manages to fill a stagnant space with electricity and wit. A post-industrial symphony landing somewhere between nutopian ambient, kankyō
ongaku and sawn-off bass science. White vinyl pressing -- one-sided vinyl, edition of 500 copies. Mastered by Noel Summerville. Art by Actual Objects.
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12"
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MOMXX 001EP
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$25.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/4/2025
Actress presents Tranzkript 1. First pressing of 300 units.
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2LP
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HJR 060LP
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2021 restock; 2LP version. South London producer Darren Cunningham returns with a suite of electronic laments, tone structures and dream-time rhythms which all carry his unmistakable fingerprint. R.I.P. comprises 15 tracks painstakingly crafted by Cunningham in his London studio over recent years, with a conceptual arc taking in death, life, sleep and religion.
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CD
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HJR 060CD
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Between sleep and the void lies the electronic interzone of Actress. Following the noted 2010 album Splazsh (HJR 049CD/LP) (voted #1 in The Wire magazine's "Top 50 Releases Of The Year") South London producer Darren Cunningham returns with a suite of electronic laments, tone structures and dream-time rhythms which all carry his unmistakable fingerprint. R.I.P. comprises 15 tracks painstakingly crafted by Cunningham in his London studio over recent years, with a conceptual arc taking in death, life, sleep and religion. Right from the debut album Hazyville, Actress' music has carried deep tinges and pockmarks of London's rave music heritage. But after the angular dynamics of Splazsh, R.I.P. heads out into deep space. The rhythms and pulses are smudged or blurred, or are hinted at by their absence. Two-step garage is collided into gamelan, and freeform interludes explore microtonal spaces and imagined string instruments. The fifteen chapters of R.I.P. begin with ascension and the Book of Genesis, played out through gardens, serpents and mythological caves. Appropriately for exploring the myths of creation, the sounds Actress creates are completely sui generis. There are no soft synths or plug-ins, and instead he uses meticulous manual sound-tinkering to create tones, tunings and textures. The ghosted rhythms and free tunings of these tracks live in a parallel universe to the conventional rigors of the dancefloor. Unlike the sterile sound-spaces rendered in so much laptop sound-product, these tracks carry traces of the endless mouse strokes that made them. The album begins with the title track, a short tonal requiem for the dead, before drifting into another beatless meditation, the rippling minimalist structure of "Ascending." "Holy Water" and "Marble Plexus" introduce rhythm, although these percussive tics could be equally sourced from sub-bass speaker stacks or marbles rolling around a bowl. "Jardin" and "Serpent" are origami-like constructions which orbit around what could be pizzicato strings or harps. Last-but-one is "IWAAD," whose pulsing 4/4 rhythms and warm hits of low-end vibration hint at a return to the real. R.I.P. underlines Actress's reputation as one of the most eloquent voices to emerge from the sub-bass nexus of London dance music.
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12"
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HJP 062EP
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2017 repress. Honest Jon's Records presents Actress' insidiously inventive take on the Shangaan style and the most eagerly-awaited installment in this 12" series.
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12"
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HJP 061EP
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An implacable, trash-and-ready Son Of Sleng Teng bleeping, buzzing, knocking, dripping, reverberating -- unresolved in nine minutes and a high-pressurized, quick-loading hyper-grub into star wars. The sleeve is de-bossed with metallic ink; the tracks are exclusive to this single (and won't appear on Actress' forthcoming Honest Jon's album).
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2LP
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HJR 049LP
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2022 repress; 2LP version with embossed printing on cover. This is the eagerly‐awaited second album by Werk Discs founder and controller Darren Cunningham. Splazsh is an adventurous, ultra-modern, thoroughly British affair, rummaging about in the inner lives of house and techno, and brilliantly elaborating the accomplishments of his debut, Hazyville (WERK 005CD). Determinedly off‐the‐map and resistant to pigeonholing, Cunningham is an enigmatic and playful figure, citing Francis Bacon and Monet as inspirations alongside Theo Parrish, Anthony "Shake" Shakir, Daft Punk, "binary codes and numeral systems," and The Avengers. He's a hard man to pin down -- somehow a key player in the post‐dubstep diaspora and yet not there at all -- but everything comes across in his shape‐shifting, richly-textured music. The South Londoner's acclaimed debut lived up to its name: a series of dream-like sketches and ideas. For Splazsh, the fog has lifted, the sounds are less submerged than before, but still sticky and close -- a signature combination of exuberance and introversion, luminescence and puzzlement. Unconstrained by the formal clichés of the dance music he loves, Actress' melodies and arrangements are enthralled by their own genies. Worlds of disturbance and melancholy revolve giddyingly inside the insidious funk of tracks like "Get Ohn" and "Lost." A range of musical influences is redrawn, from speed-garage to grime, with none crowned king. There is a reflectiveness -- the ambient drift of "Futureproofing," the radiophonic judder of "Supreme Cunnilingus" -- in amongst the industrial, synth‐wave flavors of "Casanova," and the stirring, stately "Maze." Actress has quickly and justly become one of the most respected names in the UK's new dance music underground. His own label, Werk Discs, has proven itself one of the most formidable and taste‐making UK independents of recent times, bringing the world extraordinary albums from Zomby, Lukid, Lone and Actress himself. In love with the mysteries of groove and repetition, Splazsh is both a culmination and a new beginning for Actress -- a substantial and eccentric work from a brave and coolly individual artist.
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CD
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HJR 049CD
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This is the eagerly‐awaited second album by Werk Discs founder and controller Darren Cunningham. Splazsh is an adventurous, ultra-modern, thoroughly British affair, rummaging about in the inner lives of house and techno, and brilliantly elaborating the accomplishments of his debut, Hazyville (WERK 005CD). Determinedly off‐the‐map and resistant to pigeonholing, Cunningham is an enigmatic and playful figure, citing Francis Bacon and Monet as inspirations alongside Theo Parrish, Anthony "Shake" Shakir, Daft Punk, "binary codes and numeral systems," and The Avengers. He's a hard man to pin down -- somehow a key player in the post‐dubstep diaspora and yet not there at all -- but everything comes across in his shape‐shifting, richly-textured music. The South Londoner's acclaimed debut lived up to its name: a series of dream-like sketches and ideas. For Splazsh, the fog has lifted, the sounds are less submerged than before, but still sticky and close -- a signature combination of exuberance and introversion, luminescence and puzzlement. Unconstrained by the formal clichés of the dance music he loves, Actress' melodies and arrangements are enthralled by their own genies. Worlds of disturbance and melancholy revolve giddyingly inside the insidious funk of tracks like "Get Ohn" and "Lost." A range of musical influences is redrawn, from speed-garage to grime, with none crowned king. There is a reflectiveness -- the ambient drift of "Futureproofing," the radiophonic judder of "Supreme Cunnilingus" -- in amongst the industrial, synth‐wave flavors of "Casanova," and the stirring, stately "Maze." Actress has quickly and justly become one of the most respected names in the UK's new dance music underground. His own label, Werk Discs, has proven itself one of the most formidable and taste‐making UK independents of recent times, bringing the world extraordinary albums from Zomby, Lukid, Lone and Actress himself. In love with the mysteries of groove and repetition, Splazsh is both a culmination and a new beginning for Actress -- a substantial and eccentric work from a brave and coolly individual artist.
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12"
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HJP 048EP
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"Paint, Straw And Bubbles" is vintage Actress. Melodically, you might think of classic minimalism by way of the Caribbean, and while its neurotically funky drum patterns nod to the experimental fringe of Chicago house, the low-end atmospherics betray the music's UK origins. Zomby's remix invokes UK funky with a carnival-esque house rhythm, while Maze's phasing summons 1980s cold wave and early techno, or maybe John Carpenter, or Kraftwerk's Autobahn rerouted through South London.
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