Actress - Splazsh
Toby Frith Friday, July 16, 2010 at 12:15PM 
ACTRESS - SPLAZSH
Darren Cunningham’s debut album Hazyville was one of my highlights of 2008; a paean to the spirit of analogue house music coated with a film of cobwebbed dust and dirt that sought out the darker, abstract aspect of the groove. It was individual, daring and more importantly had its own identity.
“Splazsh” continues some of those ideas and indeed perpetuates them. Cunningham seeks to deflect your attention away from the slavish attention to crisp production that so many in this genre seek to obtain. Here, circuit-based spasms and jolts collide with undulating loops and penumbras of bass in an atmosphere of barely concealed disdain for anything remotely consistent or approaching a sort of acceptable standard within house. Wonderfully lo-fi at times, this album comes alive when you least expect it and inhabits a moonlit sound world that few producers in this genre would dare to venture into.
It’s important to note though that this is an album of sketches, textures and immediacy. Cunningham refrains from traditional composition, preferring to allow his ideas and sounds to emerge in a free manner. Grooves emerge organically and unfurl without too much in the way of post-production. After the jarring oscillation of opener “Hubble”, we’re led down a path where vocal snippets chatter to and fro across a simple beat and hi-hat. On the surface it’s not doing a great deal, but like all of his work at the heart of it is an addictive embryonic funk. “Get Ohn” symbolizes this too, yet with more urgency. In a short space of time there’s been much comparison between him and Anthony Shakir, but he’s very much in favour in stripping down the groove to the bare bones, taking care in a way not to clutter matters. The likeness to the raw sampled spasms of Theo Parrish is much more accurate.
There’s time for a little bit of influence too, not least with “Maze” which recalls Arpanet’s classic “Wireless Internet” and “Let’s Fly” taking its influence from the crude abstraction of Terrence Dixon. In amongst a whole jumble of scattered noise however are some real gems that are very much Cunningham’s own creation. Once you’ve decoded the musical problems that he sets for you, most of this album comes alive. Indeed it’s at its best when he’s abstracted matters to almost unrecognisable levels.
“Wrong Potion” inhabits a murky realm between techno and dubstep but thankfully manages to sound nothing like either of them. Similarly, “Bubble Butts and Equations” has a child-like sensibility to it thanks to the Fisher-Price style sounds, but doesn’t get drawn into the sort of 8-bit IDM nonsense that seems so popular with many producers. Instead it bottoms out unexpectedly into a ghettofied boxjam leaving you none the wiser as to what will come next.
To be called “unidentifiable” in modern music is very much a holy grail and whilst I wouldn’t stretch to call Cunningham’s music that, there are some elements of it that do leave you none the wiser. This is a good thing though - too often much of what is released today can be slotted into place by someone with a keen ear. We praise it for its style, content and execution but then forget about it, returning only when we hear it on the dancefloor or in a mix. Only a handful of producers manage to summon up pieces that leave you quizzical, as if to really say aloud “What is this?”. The combination of a lo-fi aesthetic, raw off-the-cuff jams and auditory cul-de-sacs makes “Splaszh” difficult to appreciate at times, but like Shake, Theo Parrish and Jamal Moss, Cunningham’s resolve to seek out uncharted realms make him an invaluable asset.
Toby Frith
Reader Comments (1)
Sorry for my bad english. I use to read many online music sites and usually disagree with their enthousiasm for electronic albums. But I have to say that I always agree with bleep43 when you're enthousiastic. Thanks to you I discovered Actress, he's my new Cristian Vogel and I bought his 2 albums yesterday. This is what I call techno.