The producer known as ACTRESS and his r&b concrète

this is great! listened to previous album at the time and it left no impression, maybe i was too hasty

'r&b concrète' is the sort of self decription that usually entices and then disappoints but it's quite fitting in this case

this fuckin BURIES the competition

post linx

there's a mediafire link on the second page of results, idk

and

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4141569-lost-10-of-2010-1--actress-splazsh

"r&b concrète" is not an 'enticing' description lmao

self description

kinda is

ilx is full of ppl having their grand claims for their music dismissed, just this once u gotta allow it's kinda apt

it could be apt

zvookster, runoff

Been listening to this for the last ten days or so... there are a few songs ("Lost" especially) that stood out right away. The rest I've been warming up to.

Wire named this their #1 album of the year, btw.

yeah i'm guessing a few respondents itt will have seen it there

not an egregiously 'wire'ish album tho, i can imagine ppl who have never heard of luc ferrari enjoying it

excellent album, though not quite one of my very favorites of the year. i've been playing it for a month or two, and enjoy it while it's on, but find that it leaves little impression after the fact. i wonder if this is perhaps due to the fact that it inhabits a genre i spend little time with (i have never heard of luc ferrari, ftr), so i'm less able to identify its most distinctive traits? anyway, i particularly enjoy the stretch from "maze" through "let's fly," songs that fans of this type of thing never seem to mention.

don't wanna sound like a hater, but it's ok. I can see how people who haven't heard Steve Poindexter and Musique Records and Hieroglyphic Being might find it groundbreaking -- it kinda straddles the middle ground between that sound, and the abstract side of US deep house like DJ Qu and M. Pittman, w/ a bit of Chillwave enabled haze thrown in. but beyond the admittedly quite cool sound design the compositions seem to me a bit generic at times, I don't get how it "BURIES the competition". i do like the track "Hubble" a lot

he's a good dj btw, plays loads of Flyte Tyme and New Jack Swing and 90s house and stuff

a lot of the writing about this album concentrates on this "r&b concrete" angle as if "disembodied vocal samples" are somehow this new groundbreaking technique of modern electronic music production, when in actuality it is about the most cliched. hasn't Todd Edwards been "disembodying" rnb vocals since like, 1994?

u do sound like a h8r and not a very interesting one

have heard first two of those and it's not a close relaish

i wouldn't make claims for splazsh being hugely innovative

u misunderstood a ref to another hyped south london producah who might get called 'r&b concrete' ;_;

how many tracks on this have "disembodied vocal samples" and how do u discern between those and common or garden vocal samples

no need to get defensive, though if it helps boost your ILX status by all means. next step "sock master" amirite?

if anything i'm just trying to work out why this leaves me cold when I love so much of the stuff it cribs from. I guess you missed the part where I praised the sound design and mentioned that I like the track "Hubble" a lot, while touching on his excellent dj skills?

and if you can't hear Hieroglpyhic Being in something like say "Bubble Buts And Equations" then I don't believe you've heard Hieroglyphic Being

havent we already had this convo about james blake, or is this diff somehow

^^

missing u know yr shit and have good taste but 'I can see how people who haven't heard Steve Poindexter and Musique Records and Hieroglyphic Being might find it groundbreaking' is the sort of pass/agg trainspotter drivel that's not rly conducive to good ilx

u will know i have not heard 'Hieroglyphic Being' cuz he is third in yr list and i 'have heard first two of those '

idk about james blake, don't rly care/rate/etc him

there's some talk of actress in one of the rolling dance threads btw, moonship digs it iirc

no whiney weingarteno on this comment but really feel like most ppl that find this treatment of r&b interesting don't actually dig real r&b

this stuff is still pretty aight tho

don't rly care about r&b beyond the big singles yuh

i like music concrete tho

of course it doesn't sound a lot like the former, and the schematic owes little to the latter but yknow it kinda works as shorthand for what he's doing

not sure i get the (any) connection to musique concrete. it sounds like pleasantly spacey/funky idm to me. connect the dots?

"u will know i have not heard 'Hieroglyphic Being' cuz he is third in yr list and i 'have heard first two of those '"

ok well my point still stands, if you can't hear the influence Steve Poindexter's label, Muzique Records, has had on Actress's album Splazsh then etcetc

sorry if it's "pas/agg trainspotter drivel" to actually know my shit about the subject at hand, but when you say something like "this fuckin BURIES the competition" you shouldn't be surprised that somebody else might say, well actually, there's other stuff out there that already sounds like this and does it better

god yr slow

god yr butthurt?

i didn't come here to argue dude, I'll leave your thread be *waves*

tsccchhhh

entrylevs

oh ok, Burial reference, excellent. bravo old chap

still, I'm not so slow as to realize that "rnb concrete" is fucking lame

yeah its kinda a lame thread title trinket to get the spesh addled vagrants like yrself thru the door, all counts towards the admission stats tho

my sympathies, nakhchivan, for post-launch events itt

ikr

missing no just needs to chill a lil, i don't wanna scare off ppl who know more about techno than me

yeah apols for missing your pun. keep the ad homs coming though, you'll be reposted in zing thread in no time

Apparently Actress samples Youtube in his beats, tons of tightly edited low bitrate samples stacked layer upon layer.

It definitely seems like a reasonable comparison to the original Musique Concrete guys.

And I'm a big Hieroglyphic Being fan and don't feel that Actress is at all a bad comparison.

With Jamal its huge amounts material to dig through, with Actress: 2 minute long tracks.

Maybe the argument should be between brevity and long-windedness?

hmmm i don't really dig jamal moss very much and i don't think it's a great comparison unless you fixate on certain aspects of actress and the much better end of jamal moss.

the r&b-ish parts ("purple splazsh", "wrong potion") are the bits i like least. love love love the pleasantly spacy/funky IDM parts ("hubble", "bubble butts", "the kettle men"). i loathe the todd edwards influenced parts.

it didn't make my top 10, but it would've made #11 and if i made a list just on amount of time spent listening this would've been in the top 10.

i have hazyville but haven't really given it a listen ... what about his nonplus release? that was sick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbSd7vgG-JA

^^ sounds more like urban tribe to me than burial or todd e

srsly off topic but jamal moss is 75% wack

as is being detroit/chicago nerd, as anyone who witnessed moonship: the early years will certainly attest to

:)

if i did, i would

Apparently Actress samples Youtube in his beats, tons of tightly edited low bitrate samples stacked layer upon layer.

It definitely seems like a reasonable comparison to the original Musique Concrete guys.

is this so? have heard this said of other producers, but not of cunningham. which may be to say, "i haven't done the research," but what's (not) done is done. and yeah, if true, that working process does make sense of the phrase/thread title. plus helps explain the pleasant fuzziness of the sound.

sounds pleasant but it's a little too clever isn't it, calling albums "hazyville" and stuff to bait the hauntology crew?

i just think he's best when he keeps it light, straightforward and beat oriented

I need to dig the album out again and give it another listen, shifted so much stuff around in my room I've got no idea where it is.

This is one of the few albums this year I felt compelled to own on vinyl.

And yeah, Jamal does have that Sun Ra quality control thing going on. When he's on he's definitely on.

Whereas all the Actress stuff I've heard was at least worth listening to more than once.

Hazyville included, some great shit on there.

i read the Youtube thing as well and it definitely goes to explain the graininess and warmth of the album -- kinda like an extreme update of the vintage sampler aliasing you hear on classic NY boom bap stuff

the Hieroglyphic Being/Muzique comparisons I only make with reference to Splazsh. it's that slightly unhinged, unpredictable approach to drum programming, wildly unquantized percussion patterns on top of straight 4x4 kicks, crunchy bass drums and hi hats that sizzle, and insanely unfathomable synth lines. he def has a more refined sense of melody and song structure that is his own, overall the album strikes me as an IDM dude's take on the abstract US house sound that's been popular over the past couple of years or so, that just so happens to fit in with the current chillwave/hypnagogic zeitgeist. despite not being crazy on the album, it's at least an interesting direction

basically though, I wanna hear more things like "Hubble" or "Paint, Straw and Bubbles", and less like "Senorita" or "Purple Splazsh"

his edit of this on Thriller is cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xceQvaDAl08

the r&b-ish parts ("purple splazsh", "wrong potion") are the bits i like least.

OTM ... if there was $$$ to be made from making techno tributes to Prince then everyone would have been doing it years ago.

re: hazyville, i like the hardcore references in "again the addiction"

and on "crushed", too!

this album is so good & not really r&b at all and i don't think people who don't really like r&b would ever mistake this with r&b. feel like the sounds on it are very tube-ey, i visualize a lot of the lines as orange neon lights, something really linear (yet obviously very contorted) about it. way better than james blake although i didn't get the bfd w/ that thread but i also don't know anything about dance music. i've listened to this album on drugs a lot

moonship what's your top 10

my top 10 favorite albums this year

moonship what are your top 10 favourite albums this year

top 10 albums

demdike stare - liberation through hearing
martyn - fabric 50
ben klock - berghain 04
emeralds - does it look like I'm here?
dBridge & instra:mental - fabriclive 50
flying lotus - cosmogramma
shackleton - fabric 55
shed - the traveller
madlib - medicine show volume 3
anthony shakir - frictionalism

top 10 singles

martyn - is this insanity (remixes)
mmm - nous sommes mmm
wax - 30003
eqd - 04
locussolus - gunship

and other than that it was all from 2009: 2562, martyn, peverelist, zomby, the rest of that crew, wax and eqd sides by shed, scion versions, levon vincent, t++, dettmann and klock, function stuff on sandwell, milton bradley, frozen border, etc etc it all sounded as relevant or more this year as it did last year, and generally much more than what i read about in a lot of other dance music year-end lists :-(

your top 10 is lookin more like a top 5

& thanks

actually i forgot some off of my top 10 list

2562 - demons
2562 - rear window
rustie - sunburst
joker - tron

what's your top 10, flopson?

no dance stuff or anything, and i have difficulty with albums so ten is kind of a stretch but i pretty much love all these

waka flocka flame - flockavelli
e-40 - revenue retrievin
earl sweatshirt - earl
gucci mane - mr zone 6/jewelry selection
nht boyz - power triangle

purling hiss - hissteria
pc worship - s/t lp and 7" on shdwply
pig - magnetic
sex church - 6 songs by sex church
drunkdriver - s/t

this demdike stare is awesome

this didn't leave any impression on me the first couple of times i listened to it. i've been assured that it's a grower, tho not sure i care enough to find this out for myself. it's assuredly better than james blake tho.

missingNO: your mentioning of the "slightly unhinged, unpredictable approach to drum programming [&] wildly unquantized percussion patterns on top of straight 4x4 kicks" brings to mind how psyched I was to have learned about Terrence Dixon back in late '08 through Cunningham himself referring to him (along w/ a bunch of other better-known Detroiters, whose approaches I don't hear quite as strongly in Actress' work) as an influence on the 1-sheet blurb for "Hazyville".

Most of the T. Dixon/Population One stuff released on Metroplex and elsewhere that I've heard (from the mid-'90s to recent) has rhythmically really reminded me of Actress, in terms of the funky misalignments, etc.

(Anybody here into Downliners Sekt? A similar-enough aesthetic to warrant asking...)
http://boomkat.com/downloads/317164-downliners-sekt-hello-lonely-hold-the-nation
http://boomkat.com/downloads/367254-downliners-sekt-we-make-hits-not-the-public

Good to see Moonship's list there.

what's better

this - FWIW also **BUBBLING** just just outside the top 10, possibly nudging out dbridge or shackleton, FWIW also r&b concréte

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIPQqf4O9j8

or this - is this r&b concréte

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1fDsDsJsQg

downliners sekt have the right sound but the beats are chopped up a little OTT for my taste.

actress' 2010 top ten features steve poindexter @ #1
http://www.boomkat.com/charts.cfm?id=576&gID=11

Listening to this now. Not sure I get it - any of it. Tracks have been popping up on random for a while now and they've just sounded like awkward repeating patterns with little structure or development. So I've decided to listen to it as a whole. Don't hear any r'n'b whatsoever. I guess I will have to give it a couple of goes.

what's there to get? it's house music, man. we're hardly talking fucking xenakis here

I would call Actress neither house music nor easy to get to be honest.

yeah i dont really get it either, i thought it would be a grower...

It doesn't really become house music until at least the fourth track, and even then it's pretty abstract. Some tracks, that Bubble Butts one in particular, is just plain annoying. Again, I'll def give it another shot, because I've a feeling it's the kind of thing that clicks once heard in context and from then on you can't do without.

i particularly enjoy the stretch from "maze" through "let's fly," songs that fans of this type of thing never seem to mention.

― contenderizer, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 05:42 (1 month ago)

THIS, massively. Had forgotten how good 'Maze' is until putting it on again at the weekend.

I see he's on a bill with Demdike Stare and others in Bristol soon, that's hella tempting if I had any money at all.

I've been slowly getting into the Splazsh album. Works well on headphones.

Hazyville is good too, if a lot less evolved.

Yeah, I heard and liked 'Hazyville' - relatively passively - when it came out, 'Splazsh' was a big evolution though. And it does keep rewarding. Both a grower and with some moments of great immediacy.

I'm gonna go to that Bristol show on Saturday I think

i like that he uses bits of cut up youtube vids or w/e, presumably just the audio but if u play mpeg videos in winamp 2.xx u get some chill ass noise so who knows

this is awful.

people don't know how to troll anymore

whither phil paterson

this album is kind of infuriating but a few times listening to it it was the best, i don't know if i would recommend repeatedly trying it too many times -- try drugs maybe?

yeah i was gonna say, were u hi?

i hadn't even heard the album when i made this thread, just the first two or three tracks

i don't like it as much as i did over xmas, but this and his recent singles are p good

I really like this

New 12" is excellent too

I dunno if the musique concrète comparisons are apt — it just seems like soulful house-influenced electronic with a fastidious approach to sounds. wonder what kind of soft/hardware he used

also thankful this doesn't have that annoying cod 90s R&B filtered-synth squiggle that you hear on like everything that gets called dubstep or post-ds

tho thankfully this isn't dubstep or post-dubstep

Apparently Actress samples Youtube in his beats, tons of tightly edited low bitrate samples stacked layer upon layer.

It definitely seems like a reasonable comparison to the original Musique Concrete guys.

― sistern, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:01 (2 months ago)

this, p much

Hubble has a very strange effect on my brain if I listen to it all the way through. It puts me in a sinister dreamlike trance that I can't quite describe, but have rarely experienced in music

Bubble Butts and Equations has been sticking in my head this week.

tho thankfully this isn't dubstep or post-dubstep

I didn't say it was!

and i didn't say you said it was!

i've stopped playing this so much but it definitely caught me for a while

i find a lot of his tracks fastidious....in a good way! they are uhm 'well architected'

was surprised my friend who's an autechre fiend thought this was "meh", it seems to me like Ae fans would appresh this

i like this stuff a lot

someone post your favorite one or two things of his that are on youtube cause i listened to this last year and thought it was awful but am willing to re-asses

dont know too much about your taste & there is a p wide range of stuff on the album ito danceability, experimentalness, minimalism. i like these tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcnRT-m9MYo&feature=BF&playnext=1&list=QL&index=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivvzgXdf83w&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r7blGL1F8I&feature=related

I liked that last one better than the other two but this shit just isn't for me I guess.

I like his logo/cover art tho!

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x18/gr8080/41b7a5f8.jpg

Hubble has a very strange effect on my brain if I listen to it all the way through. It puts me in a sinister dreamlike trance that I can't quite describe, but have rarely experienced in music

― farielan chosder bout a chagh an i ballme trantuming (dog latin), Monday, March 21, 2011 2:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it makes me sleepy

MAZE is what i wished the TR2N soundtrack sounded like

senorita has become my ipod rep from this album. so simple, but kind of addictive (and actually pretty!)

Jordan - yeah sleepy, but I think it once made me have an inverse parasomniac moment where I kinda fell asleep while walking around with headphones and started tripping out. It was heavy man.

the b side of the new single is great

Senorita contains an Aaliyah sample, right? Hubble is one of those songs that I can listen to on repeat for 2 hours. Shigeto's album Full Circle is a good companion to Splazsh. He also plays live drums in his sets which took me by surprise (Shigeto, not Actress).

If you love Actress like me then check out "Plastic World" by BNJMN on Rush Hour. It's like a lush, less austere Splazsh. http://phs.abstractdynamics.org/2011/03/two_albums_morphosis_bnjmn.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9_BO9Kr-zc

Agreed on the BNJMN comparison. In some ways they're very different; BNJMN has a much housier feel, closer to FaltyDL maybe, and definitely a good fit for Rush Hour. But the textural quality of their sound and their approach to compression definitely share some similarities.

Also, Andy Stott's forthcoming 2x12 on Modern Love has a very Actressy vibe, maybe crossed with Dettinger... Amazing stuff.

this is as good as anything's he's done

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1ky4su

some of this sounds cool on an actress tip

http://soundcloud.com/lukid/preview-of-spitting-bile-ep

Sounds good--nice turning-the dial/soundbite preview segues. I recall Lukid's "Boxing Club" 12" from last year sounding particularly great, too.

As far as Actress + Lukid = Thriller goes, I'm enjoying their brand-new Radiohead remix (v. similar to Actress' "Surfer's Hymn" Panda Bear remix from earlier this year):

http://soundcloud.com/radiohead/radiohead-give-up-the-ghost

much prefer actress to lukid

I fell for the thread title bait, but there's nothing even remotely concrete about any of the tracks I listened to???

explain

not saying this is my favourite titled thread but it has been painstakingly elaborated on upthread

it just sounds like synthesizers and drum machines. I didn't hear any "real" sounds or noises integrated into the work in any way. He might be sampling youtube videos or something, but the end result isn't any more "concrète" than any other music that has been made using a sampler since 1980.
xp

it has been painstakingly elaborated on upthread

not really. people were like "oh he samples stuff from youtube. ok, concrète. cool"

so you would say that a requirement for music concrete is the use of environmental sound?

the last single harrier attk and some of the tracks released on twitter are the most 'sonically adventurous' things he has done

well, I don't want to make any requirements or dredge up an obsolete 60-year-old debate on musique concrete vs. electronic music. I just don't hear anything in this music that makes me think "concrete" in any way. Every track seems to contain synthesizers. Now maybe those are actually samples of motors or something pitch-shifted and layered to sound like synth pads, but if the end result just sounds like plain-ol electronic music, I don't really see the point in labeling it "concrete."

xp

yeah its kinda a lame thread title trinket to get the spesh addled vagrants like yrself thru the door, all counts towards the admission stats tho

― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:26 (7 months ago)

not saying u are a vagrant, obviously

well ithink a quick skim of the article on wikipedia will clear it up for you wk

it strikes me that you have a very narrow view of what is musique concrete that doesn't even hew to what even Pierre Schafer described as the basis of musique concrete

don't take it the wrong way, nothing personal, you just don't understand what musique concrete is and you have obviously not read and understood the thread

Thank you, come again

maybe you should learn a little more about musique concrete than what you're getting from a quick skim of wikipedia

well you might be interested to know that I have recently reread not one, not two, but THREE whole books about it

ugh plz somebody delete my posts in this thread fucking embarrassing shit ugh

i read in an interview that this dude was working as a foley artists before he made it in the techno game

and he records shit on a minidisc cuz of the low sample rate

Very late to this party as is my style, but a few thoughts after an initial 5-6 spins:

> "Hubble" is amazing, and quite unlike anything else I've heard. I can't remember if I read this somewhere or dreamt it (hopefully the latter), but I want to say that Actress called it "a study of 'Erotic City'"...

> The cut-up vocal tracks make me queasy, and it's a similar queasiness to seeing an unhealthily skinny girl walking really fast.

> I wish the album had more BASS throughout it; it sounds emaciated in parts, as if it had been gutted of bass rather than just built without bass as a foundation. This probably relates to my queasiness above.

> I do understand very much why so many people call this a grower and have given it many listens trying to "get it"... It's an almost painfully drawn-in-on-itself sounding record, a decisive statement of a very esoteric aesthetic; it almost feels as if its creator is autistic. I'm not sure if there's anything to "get," though, but I'm also not sure that matters.

Haha, I love this post, Clarke. Bit more Actress banter here: FACT's 20 albums for 2011 including the whole thing about Erotic City.

Andy Stott's recent album Passed Me By is operating in a similar vein, but with BASS

I like that Stott record; it's really solid. I think it's perhaps getting a little over-hyped in certain circles, but I enjoy it a lot. There's in immersiveness to it, however, that puts it in an entirely different ballpark than Actress for me. (Maybe that "immseriveness" is just bass!) Also, Actress's beats are sometimes skittery in a way Stott's aren't--not like drill-and-bass "wheeeee drum programming!" skittery, and not "purposefully degraded" skittery (like Burial's can feel... It's like a five-espressos skittery, as if he's playing his drum machines live (not quantized) but he can't stop shaking and twitching.

Dunno if there's a better thread for this sort of thing, so I'll just park this post here for the moment: the new Patten album GLAQJO XAACSSO is really fucking good. Similar kind of knee-capped beats to Actress and it's also seemingly been built out of all these odd off-cut samples that he's possibly fished out of the scraps bin. Where it is different is that it feels a whole lot lusher and denser. In some places it's kind of reminiscent of Disco Inferno in that you feel like you're trying to deal with this whole rush of sonic information all at once, you need to really stretch your ears wide-open to fit all of the sounds in. Well worth hearing imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgHdw5HZrn8

plenty of good Actress this year > Lauren Halo remix, Panda Bear remix, Harrier ATTK / Gershwin, Parallel World. There is also a Honest Jons ad for an Actress meets Shangaan electro thing.

The Adultswim interview with Actress that recently got posted is worth watching--I don't think he's ever really been interview on camera before, has he?
http://video.adultswim.com/unclassified/actress-interview.html

Yeah there's this one...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ot_u5_o5vY

It's not as good as the adult swim one though.

Looking forward to his new album, whenever that's coming out.

i dig that patten track

He did a remix of Kasabian. It's kinda good!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpkjL4m9oyE&

Patten's album was mentioned upthread. I listened to it all the way through and thought it was pretty useless, but what did you guyses think?

agreed

just too left-footed for me to get down with, though i felt the same way about the entire genre of dubstep at first and now i'm a convert

before i check out the Kasabian remix i need to know if there's any Kasabian in it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxoT4u5mcc

whoa, there is a new full-length?

RIP Actress

Getting lots of good reviews so far btw

blah, not on Spotify or whatever yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4Wa7UN01eY

And it's really lovely, he's given in to his pretty side.

psyched for the set tonight for unsound

RIP
rest in peace
fassy get the coffin
then dem get the wreath

(no homophobe)

excellent album

like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWO7YZ-gZqk

Yeah, that is good but that whole Shangaan Shake series is all about that one Theo Parrish remix imo, that thing is a killer.

I spent a lot of time a lil while ago unsuccessfully trying to work that electro 2 track into a set

the MMM is thee shangaan remix imo.

i want to do a shangaan remix poll, was thinking on the way to work about whether i'd vote for theo or MMM or old apparatus or peverelist, all so dope

<3 dj rashad and spinn's too but obv it's kinda just a particularly accessible footwork track w/ a shangaan sample or two

personally both of those actress mixes are a little too "out there" for me

Damn, The Lord's Graffiti is one muthafucka of a tune. He is very good.

Still digesting R.I.P personally ("Caves Of Paradise" is the standout for me so far--wobbly bassline phrase-length + phased fast hi-hats = sold), but this free John Cale remix is esp. great (more pitched-down/low-slung than anything on the new record): http://www.factmag.com/2012/04/20/download-actress-remix-of-john-cale/

i've only heard "marble plexus" so far and i loved it, looking forward to picking up the album hopefully tomorrow

gah this album is fucking incredible

very "selected ambient works" imo

had this locked on repeat since i got it

"N.E.W." is so incredible

my favorite track on "splazsh" has always been "hubble"

you read my mind mr cunningham and made an entire album in that style

pretty sure one of the tracks on this is a remix of "crushed" from hazyville

gah this album is fucking incredible

very "selected ambient works" imo

― the late great, Saturday, April 28, 2012 6:44 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

had this locked on repeat since i got it

"N.E.W." is so incredible

cosign all of this. never really got into splazsh, really digging this though.

this is really cool

never liked splazsh either

dunno abt these last 4 tracks after 'glint'

kinda feel i need to start from the beginning again to work them out

this is good

Liking this, the lord's graffiti and raven are the two that stood out on first listen.

Is this streaming anywhere?

i'm alright with these last four tracks now. i don't enjoy them especially but the juxtapositions they provide lend a sense of consequence to the rest, however gnomic; ie without them this would be a too-well-contained and easily disposable nice bit of idm retro.

i like the middle section in particular, 'jardin' / 'serpent' / 'shadow from tartarus' - 'serpent' is very autechre homage to nokia 3310. in fact a fair few of the tiny insectoid music box melody tracks remind me of lp5/ep7 era ae, moreso than aphex at least.

jardin is amazing...

you guys might be interested to check out shackleton's new "music for the quiet hour".

A new Shackleton already? Still getting a lot of mileage out of the Pinch collab. Another Honest Jon's release? Reading the response on the new Actress album I will definitely check it out, couldn't get into Splazsh..

The new Shackleton is out on his own label:

http://boomkat.com/cds/523774-shackleton-music-for-the-quiet-hour-the-drawbar-organ

i keep thinking of the word "palimpsest" in relation to this album, like what you get after coming home at 7am and all the music you've heard all night is still rattling around in a jangly smear inside your head

I LOVE THIS

I just picked up R.I.P yesterday and want to add to the chorus of praise... This is immediately more engaging and satisfying to me than Splazsh--more beauty, more restraint, more detail, more melodic development. It's a lovely record that it's hard to imagine any other producer making. I think it may even be a "deeper" record than Splazsh but without the sheen of inscrutability that led so many people to keep on and keep on with it; R.I.P is more immediate without being any less complex.

timely reminder for me that this is a good rainy day album

i agree that it sounds a lot like autechre, especially the one track with the annoying birdsong sample sound and a couple others i can't recall are very much like the subtler confield-era stuff

I can see where that comparison comes from, but this is so much warmer and more luscious to me than Autechre.

Think I prefer Splazsh tbh - this is okay, but very similar in vibe to Oversteps-era Ae but not as involving. Might need a few more spins though.

This is really good - his production style certainly lends itself to moody atmospheric numbers far more than it does the more beat-driven dancefloor-based material. "Tree Of Knowledge" sounds like lurching brostep recorded to a tape deck via a microphone pressed against laptop speakers to my ears.

R.I.P. is going to save the lives of so many cracked-out kids, you know at 4am when the drugs won't let you sleep and no music sounds right - this will be the only album they can listen to

very "selected ambient works" imo

vahid otm

whenever I listen to this it feels like a watered down version of madlib beat tapes, I wish I could get into it because in theory this is like my favorite shit

which madlib beat tapes are these?

I love this record. Keep coming back to it.

new 12" "silver cloud" is some beautiful sinister fuzzed out fucked-up mutant techno

is it as good as the la dusseldorf track of the same name

Yeah this is great - nice to have some longer tracks from him.

"voodoo posse chronic illusion" is so so good

yep

a new afx album would be nice but actress is kinda supplanting the old 90s greats imo

still unsure how I've listened to and enjoyed this dude's music for over two years but only found out a few weeks ago that he played professionally for West Brom

"voodoo posse chronic illusion" is so so good

― keef qua keef (Jordan), Friday, February 15, 2013 3:50 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

absolutely addicted to this at the moment

Even more intriguingly, it’s known that Cunningham was previously a footballer due to embark on a career with West Bromwich Albion, before injury forced him to retire from the sport at the age of 19 (a “crushing decision to make,” he says). What business, our inner snob demands to know, could a one-time professional hoofer of balls have making music as obtuse, as formally brilliant as this?

had no idea about this, rmde at the pleb who wrote that anyway

http://peterkempsrecordreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/actress-harrier-attk-gershwin-roy.html

also found this charming review by some pensioner

Remixes of Legowelt: https://soundcloud.com/clone-nl/legowelt-elementz-of-houz

his boiler room mix is still my all time favorite dj mix

whenever I listen to this it feels like a watered down version of madlib beat tapes, I wish I could get into it because in theory this is like my favorite shit

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Sunday, 20 January 2013 18:03 (4 months ago) Permalink

rip clicked w/ me and its completely stunning, I was looking at it in the wrong light entirely

what light are you looking at it in now?

http://i.imgur.com/PxHGxsI.jpg

I actually haven't smoked in a long time!

I can't really answer that intelligently, I guess I'm letting it be its own thing and not trying to compare it to anything else, and that has allowed my perception to the music to open itself up a little more

I don't expect to be as spazzy as I wanted it to be originally maybe? idk

my perception of the music, obv

Still think it's a lot less than the sum of the ideas that people use to describe it.

missing no just needs to chill a lil, i don't wanna scare off ppl who know more about techno than me

― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Tuesday, December 28, 2010 11:30 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah apols for missing your pun. keep the ad homs coming though, you'll be reposted in zing thread in no time

― missingNO, Tuesday, December 28, 2010 11:31 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

His new album is being released in October.

http://i.imgur.com/CDtNyaQ.jpg

(this is from Clash magazine)

excellent news

yesssssssss

Ghettoville is the bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image.

Where the demands of writing caught the artist slumped and reclined, devoid of any soul, acutely aware of the simulated prism that required breakout.

Four albums in and the notes and compositions no longer contain decipherable language.

The scripts now carry tears, the world has returned to a flattened state, and out through that window, the birds look back into the cage they once inhabited.

Spitting flames behind a white wall of silence.

The machines have turned to stone, data reads like an obituary to its user.

A fix is no longer a release, it's a brittle curse. Zero satisfaction, no teeth, pseudo artists running rampant, but the path continues.

R.I.P Music 2014.

Actress

LOL

No comment on that up there, but just came here to say:

if you like Actress, check out that Gardland "Syndrome Syndrome" album on Rvng Intl, it's dope

it's got it's own thing, but the effect sometimes reminded me of the more upfront Actress jams

sorry actress :(

it sucks to be young and sad, but there's a whole lot of liberating history before you.

LOL

Still excited for the new album doe

sad news

new saido berahino 12 on force tracks is my shit right now anyway tho

i'm still excited too but it made me LOL

Ghettoville is the bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image.

Where the demands of writing caught the artist slumped and reclined, devoid of any soul, acutely aware of the simulated prism that required breakout.

Four albums in and the notes and compositions no longer contain decipherable language.

The scripts now carry tears, the world has returned to a flattened state, and out through that window, the birds look back into the cage they once inhabited.

Spitting flames behind a white wall of silence.

The machines have turned to stone, data reads like an obituary to its user.

A fix is no longer a release, it's a brittle curse. Zero satisfaction, no teeth, pseudo artists running rampant, but the path continues.

R.I.P Music 2014.

Pat O'Rourke, 33, Waterford.

haha

well played

will attempt to dig that Gardland thing out of the inbox in the meantime

Ghettoville is the bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image.

Where the demands of writing caught the artist slumped and reclined, devoid of any soul, acutely aware of the simulated prism that required breakout.

Four albums in and the notes and compositions no longer contain decipherable language.

The scripts now carry tears, the world has returned to a flattened state, and out through that window, the birds look back into the cage they once inhabited.

Spitting flames behind a white wall of silence.

The machines have turned to stone, data reads like an obituary to its user.

A fix is no longer a release, it's a brittle curse. Zero satisfaction, no teeth, pseudo artists running rampant, but the path continues.

R.I.P Music 2014.

Your dad sends his regards.

Love,

Mum

yeah that's the one

A fix is no longer a release, it's a brittle curse. Zero satisfaction, no teeth, pseudo artists running rampant, but the path continues.

- bob marley

Ghettoville is the bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image.

Where the demands of writing caught the artist slumped and reclined, devoid of any soul, acutely aware of the simulated prism that required breakout.

Four albums in and the notes and compositions no longer contain decipherable language.

The scripts now carry tears, the world has returned to a flattened state, and out through that window, the birds look back into the cage they once inhabited.

Spitting flames behind a white wall of silence.

The machines have turned to stone, data reads like an obituary to its user.

A fix is no longer a release, it's a brittle curse. Zero satisfaction, no teeth, pseudo artists running rampant, but the path continues.

R.I.P Music 2014.

PS: There's some chicken left in the fridge if you get hungry. Don't forget to water my plants.

Actress

srsly though i'm stoked for this

yeah I love Actress. When is it out?

January 27. Check out his sweet jacket too
http://factmag-images.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Actress-11.5.2013jpg1.jpg

psyched

sennheiser headphones - good to see.

he should probably lay off the purp.

nah

Pretty sure that's just a press photo and this is the sleeve art:

http://ninjatune.net/files/images/actress/two/5021392853192.jpg

good art

i haven't checked ninja tune for a really long time (not since the mid-90s) but between this and machinedrum they're doing pretty good

and Lorn.

They've got King Midas Sound now, too.

https://bleep.com/release/48689-actress-grey-over-blue

A lot of year-end round ups I've read have compared all sorts of artists to Actress and every time I investigate I am left disappointed. Who else actually has the same bleary, drained, warped sound?

everything on Opal Tapes?

lee gamble somewhat

patten

Actress as forerunner to the year of "abrasive, conceptual techno."

https://soundcloud.com/ninja-tune/grey-over-blue

so this is out on the seedy places of the internet now and i couldn't help myself. absolutely great album

good to know, thanks for heads-up

Ghettoville or the 12"?

I'm stupidly excited for both, really- this is the first producer in ages that's made me break my "no stupidly expensive import white labels" rule.

the album is out there

ugh tired writin bad

but yes, I am repetitively, redundantly excited for this new album collection of musical song tracks

after a lot of love, there is a negative review in new mojo.

and an indication that this is the last release under this moniker ?

loving the jacket ..

it is "the bleached-out and black-tinted conclusion of the Actress image" apparently

description makes sense after listening to it. really dark album. perfect for the bitter january/feburary cold coming up. gaze is a straight up jam

a lot of this sounds like dean blunt

as on hazyville and splazsh i like the uptempo tracks best of all

this is maybe too lo-fi for my tastes

kinda taking the "silver cloud" style even further. i'll have to hear this a few more times before i can say anything about it.

love the album cover, i wonder if i'll ever come around on his music

A lot of year-end round ups I've read have compared all sorts of artists to Actress and every time I investigate I am left disappointed. Who else actually has the same bleary, drained, warped sound?

― boxedjoy, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 2:47 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe the huerco s album "colonial patterns" (on software records)

terrence dixon's "from the far future pt. 2" is the most actress-sounding non-actress thing i've found:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67GArweOYL0

$120+ for box set you got to be kidding me ..

It's marginally cheaper direct from Ninja Tune- their site is quoting me the equivalent of $90 including US shipping.

Really couldn't get into that Huerco S album, it was just too grey and sludgy, I think Actress does this sort of thing with more variety in tone and emotion (although I have yet to hear Ghettoville)

http://www.thebeatjuice.com/read/2014/01/07/4174/actress-q-and-a/

And I certainly haven’t retired! A lot of records out there at the moment are ones that I’ve recorded, and people don’t even know.

Every Land was originally part of Paul White's forthcoming album but as the record has taken shape it just didn't fit any more (that, and the massive sample...). His new LP marks a whole new direction as he explores new wave, Krautrock, and much more. Someone said it sounds like Actress playing jazz, which is as close as anything we've come up with. There are some hints in his recent Boiler Room live show: watch it here.

http://boilerroom.tv/recording/paul-white/

Last question. On Twitter, why do you follow Farrow & Ball?

Why not? Haha. Because… Listen, my whole ambition in life is to live in a beautiful house. So, when it comes to like paints and shit… I want the best. And Farrow & Ball is pretty much the best.

Also the Ghettoville box xet is £50 on the Ninja Tune UK website. Might get myself involved with that

the box set is just ghettoville and hazyville on lp right?

+ ghettoville on CD + 32 page art book

+ hazyville on CD and whoops it's a 40 page art book

guess that'd be pretty cool to have. Probably sounds awesome cranked up.

vinylwise, i mean

5 LPs, 2 CDs and one art book

100 bucks still sounds kind of a lot for this

a lot of the tracks on ghettoville seem to invite playing around with different RPMs

This has been bugging me all day- is that a Bee Gees sample on "IWAAD"?

From "Tragedy," maybe?

http://www.theguardian.com/music/video/2014/jan/24/whys-actress-ghettoville-is-the-one-album-you-should-hear-this-week-video

My favourite thing to do with Actress is to listen to it on headphones when I'm really really tired and just about to drop off to sleep. his best stuff warps around theta waves and opens up weird spaces in my mind, but I didn't get that from his last album at all - everything was much more surface-level.

come on man, that's a ridiculous criticism

eh what? I def thought R.I.P. had a more accessible superficial sound compared to Splaszh and this new one. It was okay, but I felt everything about it was more 'obvious', more 'defined' if you get what i mean?

"accessible" says more about the listener than the music

"superficial" is a mode of listening, not a feature of music

"obvious", again, relates more to the listener than the music itself

"defined" = not sure what you mean

uh....

wut?

I want to like Actress but I find his stuff rather boring in practice.

First listen to Ghettoville, initial impression is what a magnificently grim and shitty record.

As lovely as the crunch of broken glass in a piss-stinking stairwell.

I don't think it's that grim (compared to his other stuff anyway)

i am not yet impressed by this

never found his stuff to be very immediate so am hoping ghettoville is as good as RIP (which sometimes i am still not sure about either, but there are moments on there that are some of my favourite things of the last few years) which took me a long time to figure out what was actually *there* in that thing

Really love teh newie on 1 x listen, some really wow moments.

RIP works much better for me as a full album rather than track-by-track. Will definitely check this out.

5 LPs, 2 CDs and one art book

100 bucks still sounds kind of a lot for this

― the late great, Wednesday, January 8, 2014 2:00 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously?

srs

actually ... you know what, it IS 180g vinyl

i guess for 180g vinyl it's about right

5 lps sold individually would cost about 100$

weird album

takes a while to warm up

I'm listening now (only as far as contagious) and his ability to create *sounds* is better than almost everyone else in electronic music. Every single noise on this is so textured and interesting. What he does with those sounds is less interesting to me, sadly.

the beginning is quite clunky

In fairness I've had the same reaction to all his albums. At the bit where it picks up now and enjoying it more.

cliche of the day: the last track is like the shaft of sunlight at the end of blade runner

more cliche would be if it has that embers burning/crackling sound all through it (still not heard this album)

warming up to it!

i really like the bell tones in the first track, best bell tones since maphive 6.1

love how they sound against the bass synth that comes in around 4 minutes

i agree with matt dc, this album is really about the sounds.

the second track sounds like a lonely tugboat lost on a foggy, heaving sea.

it's so appropriate that it's on ninja tune. so trip hop.

struggled with this yesterday, second time around was much better. Rap is the standout for me, anyone recognise the sample?

gonna guess it's 'wrap yourself around me' by david grant

http://www.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF459907-01-01-03.mp3

yeah

n1

i agree with paolo. a lot of this album actually *isn't* that dark - it's the sound of a dude playing around with beats and funny noises.

i don't think i'm ever going to "get" this dude's music. nothing happens! what are you supposed to DO to it.

listen

xpost, as I mentioned upthread, I found the best time to appreciate Actress is when I'm in a slumber state.

yeah. it's music for cold winter nights. hypnotic, eerie, menacing, a little seedy.

actress sounds great in the middle of a playlist of artists working in a similar vein, e.g., burial; shackleton and appleblim (skull disco); various prod.; the livity sound roster of artists; the bug.

shackleton got some vibey feelings on some of the records dunno about the others

Kind of like that RA went out on a limb and gave this 2.5.

I feel asleep listening to it on a bus a few weeks, and still haven't consciously made my whole way through it. I found it a bit of a trial, but did not dislike what I heard.

Actress live, on the other hand, was one of the best shows I've seen in recent years.

A few weeks back, that is... although that bus trip did seem to last forever!

actress sounds great in the middle of a playlist of artists working in a similar vein, e.g., burial; shackleton and appleblim (skull disco); various prod.; the livity sound roster of artists; the bug.

Yes - it lends itself well to mixes etc where you want to find a good segue between two ends of a spectrum.

the first track on this goes on a while without doing much but I find it strangely compelling

might be its resemblance to the Chrono Trigger 2300 AD world map theme triggering subliminal positive associations

i had that same thought! that echoing bell.

he mentioned that he's released music without the actress handle and it appears that stuff is out under the name levantis. should definitely check out the 12" that's out. great stuff. just like ghettoville but more beat oriented. he mentioned in some other interview that there was an earlier version of ghettoville that was a lot more techno influenced and it seems like some of those tracks could be these.

love this tune

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0kpKw075ZCY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

ahhh how the hell you edit a post, now i look like a grandma

I love how interactive ghettoville is, it practically begs you to fuck with the bpms. Also the shitty packaging ensures each person's copy will have a signature of minor damage.

i picked it up on vinyl and i swear most of the songs sound like they were originally conceived for 45' tempo

https://ninjatune.net/release/actress/xoul-ep

Out of stock already :/

dj kicks is a ***** masterpiece

How well does it flow? Heard some of the transitions were a bit on the jarring side.

Given that 'Pen Expers' is on there I can't see how it could be anything but.

smitten with this. outside of spotify irregularly making a hash of track transitions it flows v well

pen expers arriving is amazing, just listen to it ffs

can't wait to hear this.

After a quick listen this morning, there's not a lot of mixing going on, the transitions are quick but mainly OK. Obviously, it's mainly about the selection of tracks.

(I am quite a fan of jarring transitions btw)

pen expers arriving is amazing

It really is! The mix itself is great throughout but sort of... shapeless? Just when you think it's going somewhere it decides to wander off and see what's in another direction entirely.

i only felt it was jarring the first couple of times i listened through, when i was listening for beat matching and finding none. after a few listens it really opened up for me. i feel like he is really pushing the envelope as far as matching up moods and vibes in tracks. almost every mix makes perfect sense to me now, and i'm amazed at the connections he makes between tracks.

that's what he's best at though, is my thought on him - finding diagonal connections in music, that is.

Yeah it does feel like a consistent progression in terms of mood, if not in momentum.

this is very fine work

thread title has put me off listening to actress until now.... but i really like this!

i don't think it's shapeless at all! most mixes i will stick on and zone out which is often exactly what i want. but the way this mix evolves suddenly and kinda strangely really keeps my attention focussed. i've found it great for running to.

dude's music is just as enervating and like listening to paint dry when he calls himself levantis as when he calls himself actress

did you just fart?

one of the worst all time thread titles

Actress is a totally amazing recording moniker though.

how should actress make his music less enervating? throw some donks on it?

Actress is opening for Animal Collective on the current leg of their U.S. tour, stoked to see them both soon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg1Pw0y-x8Q

"Look, I don't care, you've got to be in the video."

i knew their "retirement" wasn't gonna last

So is it pretty much confirmed that those one-off cassingles on Ninja Tune lately have been Actress? THAT KNIGHTSBRIDGE OG, DIAL 666 8100, and BANK OF ENGLAND?

say what?

Yeah, there's been a series of single-track cassette releases on Ninja Tune over the last couple weeks that have had people playing Spot the Anonymous Producer. The all-caps phrases are the artist names they were released under; the tracks are, respectively, "ZENO'S PARADOX," "UBER SPLIFF TO GATWICK" and "CHAOS RAIN"

haha sounds dope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wTUQXiLV-Q

must admit i prefer the first single

X22RME video has very brief shot of Crystal Palace park (the Bowl). So yay for that and I will likely buy your record.

dj kicks is a ***** masterpiece

― the late great, Tuesday, May 12, 2015 10:11 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

late great OTM

This new single made me feel sick

how so

i preferred the first single

album out today

"RUNNER" is so good

This may be my favourite yet. As expected, I quite like his pseudo-remix of Fauré's Requiem.

Disappointed by this. I dunno, it sounds like a Clark album or something. Ok background music when it's on, but can't remember much about it after.

"RUNNER" is so good

Yep

i like the new record a lot

i still haven't heard it! my record store didn't get in their copies on friday. going to have to wait a few more days ...

I think it is his best album yet.

mystery solved

https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/20825

This is fantastic, and probably his most accessible album yet. Either this or Splazsh is his best for me

this guy's music makes me fall asleep and have weird dreams. every. single. time.

I like this album a lot but it might be more fair to call it a beat tape

His entire footballing career could have been one slow slide down the pyramid from West Brom and it would still have been more exciting than his music.

or your posting

fuck excitement

liking this a lot more than ghettoville so far

I like it a lot and think it does justice to the "r&b concrète" Nakh description in thread title.

I cant even remember what Sweet Exorcist sounded like, but a lot of this is vibing listening to them on a tape walkman in the early 90's.

One of my favourite Actress collabs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1KLmphseFs

New album is pretty great I think.

This might be a bit of a shot in the dark, but if any Glasgow posters were thinking of going to see him at the Art School this coming Saturday, I have a ticket but can't make it, so post here or Ilxmail me if you want it.

You would get the bonus prize of hanging out with ilxor paolo for the evening.

Event details here for anyone interested:
https://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?946991

HIYA! my email is scottjamesramage at googlemail dot com

Just sent you an email :)

Why is "senorita" from his 1st album only 2 minutes, should have been 10 minutes or something, arrgh. Some other tracks too.

I was disappointed by his new AZD I must say, too straight forward. But I saw it on the record store yesterday day and almost bought it.

His latest album is beautiful and I cant stop listening to it and not enough people are talking about it

AZD?

I agree, I'm a big fan of Actress generally but it took me a long time to listen to this for whatever reason. I think there's something that happens in all popular music but seems amplified in electronic/techno, where the novelty of a new sound or approach wears of very quickly. So AZD is a perfectly elegant and beautiful expression, but it doesn't have that shock of the new. It's definitely been overlooked/underheard.

I'm not well versed in Actress but definitely found AZD approachable while still esoteric, so A+ here

AZD has been growing on me. Hearing it the car has helped me appreciate its innate strangeness a lot more.

there is an early Warp feel to this in places that reminds me of listening to Sweet Exorcist when I was a kid. I can understand it not getting universal love, but I have a lot of time for Actress's thing.

It's been growing on me as well, since I wrote here earlier. Guess I had to listen to it in one long stretch, not the detailed listen, to appreciate it.

Texture has always been one of the primary concerns of Actress (aka Darren Cunningham), his music melding peculiar samples with decayed dancefloor sounds to create abstract, R&B concrète

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2018/event/actress-london-contemporary-orchestra

tried this album a few times.
didn't really do much for me.
but its possible I was not in the right place for it.

that levantis "romantic psychology" record is flipin spiffy. a cold damp cave / ceremonial robes

ahh .. i should clarify, I meant the actress vs LCO album that's due out soon.

it's not so different from the new oneohtrix, but still has that more subdued/poised, soupy actress quality that I find makes it very listenable

ah man i LOVED the vs LCO single, looking forward to the album

wasn't really feeling AZD apart from "blue window", for some reason!

in the realm of 21st c. electronica even 'texture' doesn't seem adequate enough to describe the vibes actress is involved in.. it's more like "physicality" and "sensation".. really hard, high level lysergic interactions with textures and stuff.. idk ymmv

Someone ordered a London Contemporary Orchestra

Possibly while high

'Faure in Chrome' from AZD does a better job of incorporating orchestral textures than most of LAGEOS, I'm afraid.

revisiting splazsh today, jesus christ "hubble"

jesus christ the whole record really, i definitely loved it at the time but it's even better than i remembered, broken and perverse but also pretty straightforwardly funky and danceable, fractured techno swaddled in vast atmospheres + disintegrated vocal samples, and then at the end it gets kinda ugly and violent! love it

Actress rules. I'll never not look forward to new material by him.

def one of the best artists of the decade

Absolutely, total hero

yeah agree

i was disappointed by r.i.p at the time, idk, maybe bc of the absence of vocals and it being less apparently danceable, it felt like a collection of inwardly-turned idm fragments to me. i am discovering, to my regret, that this was an extremely surface-level reading!!! "raven" and "shadow from tartarus" and "caves of paradise" are amazing and i don't even know what "jardin" is

I like the description of it as "a twilight interzone between rest and wakefulness"

(from the Wire end of year 2012)

feels in retrospect like R.I.P was a peak along with Splazsh

although Hazyville, Ghettoville, and AZD were all pretty much equally amazing

R.I.P. and Ghettoville are both amazing

splazsh and ghettoville are my favorites

also he is an amazing DJ

This could either be something special or a complete mess:

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/131511-actress-x-stockhausen-sin-x-ii-2019

ghettoville is my favorite, absolutely scraped out

feel like i could put any track from it on a mix with early godflesh and no one would blink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo0BniC5oco

New LP, Karma and Desire, coming out in October.

... combining titles of two of my favorite records by artists named "Pharoah(e)"!

His new album was supposed to come out last month. I wonder what happened.

AT LAST

https://thequietus.com/articles/28603-actress-new-album-88

I couldn't figure out the clue but I found a link to the unlocked album regardless

88 is out now. Ninja Tune will release Karma & Desire in October 2020.

oh now its obvious!

Heavy later BoC vibe a few minutes in.

Yeah, I'm really enjoying this so far.

This drifts along very nicely, I like the deep bass sound. BoC vibes is otm!

this is awesome

I agree!

To me it sounds extremely Flying Lotus, and also maybe like he got some Korg Volcas? The synth textures feel very familiar to me (and I use a lot of Volcas). Also its more like a 22 minute beat tape than an album, but none of these are bad things, I'm into it.

Although some of these beats wear out their welcome by the time they hit 2 min, as opposed to his murky & detailed tracks that feel like they could go on forever.

Actress is less sprawl-prone than FL. His tracks come across as self-enclosed, gnomic fragments ('hedgehogs', per Fr. Schlegel) more so than FL's comparatively maximalist approach. I'm also tempted to argue that Actress is paradoxically closer to the core Warp aesthetic than FL.

True, FlyLo packs a lot into his 2 min tracks.

On the plus side I'm currently listening to AZD again, what an album.

i hear shake shakir in the newest actress but shake has just generally been on my mind so idk

lol at the emails from actress with subject lines looking like straight up spam

anybody call the phone number?

i did there was some music
meh

Karma & Desire strikes me as his piano album, and in some ways his vocal album as well, with feats. by Zsela, Sampha, Aura T-09 and Christel Well. He gets more out of this spartan palette than when he's collaborating with a full orchestra as on LAGEOS. There's also plenty of overtly electronic material that hearkens back to the work for which he's best known, so the the risk of monotony is averted throughout. At first pass, this has got to be one of his best releases so far.

Also, 'Public Life', a bona fide solo piano piece performed by Vanessa Benelli Mosell, is better than anything on Drukqs imo.

ohhhhhh my god

on one level seems like a straight-up gorgeous nighttime house record, on another seems like one of his most formally ambitious and realized projects

2020: year of the dance full-length for people who love doing it wrong

Yeah, I love when he convincingly reminds you that you don't have to choose.

xp

in a year that was less stacked this would be my aoty easy. maybe it is

ok wow this is something else

Oh my actual goodness this is unreal

This is superb. It'll sound daft, but it's making me miss London so much - London at night, black streets in the rain, the blind foreheads of houses, the promise of solace behind every door.

I hesitate to invoke the B word but a lot of the stuff he's doing with claustral atmospheres and the slurring of voices is kinda Burial-adjacent.

I was just thinking that. Album feels like a cross between Drukqs and Burial. And it's fantastic.

this is great, much better than the last mixtape, it feels so singular and uncompromising

Actress is my favourite artist recording name ever, I think. I find it compellingly blank and suggestive at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovr3Zh28ZtQ

This is classic Actress but very much a headphones album (or at least a solitary/nighttime album), I made the mistake of putting it on during morning coffee time while my partner was around and it sounded really dumb in that context. :(

i listened to this over the weekend after first listens of a few other things and 1) i enjoyed it, 2) i was impressed by it, 3) i thought 'this is hipster music that will probably not go over great in a social context'

Haha.

'Gliding Squares' is the least Actress-y track on here but it's lovely.

mornings have been pretty grey here so this record's been suiting them perfectly

the short film works very well imo

though it's a hipster film that will probably not go over great in a social context

thanks for the tip y’all. fall has pushed into my part of the world and the drizzle started about halfway through this new album. perfect for this evening.

So this is simply magnificent. Eine kleine nachtmusik alright, dropping in and out of clubs at night-time but never getting to the dance floor because you're vaguely distressed, slightly melancholy. And you want to get down! Instead of dancing the euphoria mixed with said melancholy in your head. Superb use of volume differences, subtle shifts in tempo, from 4/4 to the loneliness of a Burial runner.

this is fantastic

lbi otm - except there's a lot of straight-up floor music here too that makes me miss dancing to hot/sexy/cool music so gd much

damn lbi nailed it

sorry you don't like me

I love the exchange between nakchivan and missingNO that kicks off this thread!

Incredible album, "Save" has been running through my head all day (or some meager echo of it, memory can't really capture it).

I've been asked to produce the new Lighthouse Family album.

— AZD (@ctress_a) October 8, 2021

The thing about Actress is that his music is always mixed almost entirely in mono.

I realise it's an aesthetic, but I find it really hard to listen to.

I find his music far more challenging than, say, Autechre

Was gonna say that I feel exactly the opposite. I haven’t listened to a lot of Autechre tho, and this thread made me realize I’m only familiar with about half of Actress’ work. I also appreciate the sort of aimless quality of some of his music, which some here seem to regard as a weakness of his style.

wow i got weird on this thread, sorry! i'm still not a huge actress fan but like small doses. generally still think there is more style than substance and i don't find it challenging at all really.

lol i was being unreasonably combative myself, i do like you map <3

hey, thanks brad! i like you too. :)

I love the exchange between nakchivan and missingNO that kicks off this thread!

― the article don, Saturday, 7 November 2020 17:33 (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

i didn't love it at all, it was needlessly hectoring on nakchivan's part (which was apparently their thing despite being a beloved poster so more fool me i guess) and caused several days of psychological torment (yeah, i'm a weak one fr). obv my opinion and the way in which i stated it was shit but idk it did feel a little unsafe there for a minute as a neurodiverse person who has faced a lifetime of bullying (yah i know you don't really gaf about us beyond boilerplate please don't kys platitudes lol but still seems relevant) ... anyway i wish i hadn't stumbled upon this thread in the archives and wish i had never ever posted on this website but what are you gonna do (mods, pls do me a favour and delete/ban my account, ty)

probably my favorite musician of the decade. thick smoke always hanging in the air

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACxhOLmLyJI

Actress & Mount Kimbie - 'AZD SURF'

Not really into Mount Kimbie but this is very nice

probably my favorite musician of the decade

After working on my ballots for the 2010s poll I think I agree with you

I didn't totally get Karma & Desire at the time and felt like I was missing something after I read the posts here, but it finally clicked while I listened to it while falling asleep last night. I think now that it has its hooks in me it may eventually replace RIP as my favorite, but time will tell. What a strange and unfriendly record this is. Are the people who compared it to Drukqs just talking about all the piano stuff, or the odd, seemingly random approach to sequencing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4Miu5PuZg

Happy he's back. I like this track, though I remain convinced he'll never again reach the heights of R.I.P.

new album... incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crlGL-2hObw

hit that spdiff

This is great, listening to it constantly.

His set performing with Autechre in Sydney was a trip - began very disjointed and accumulated atmosphere and complexity, a lot like that track above. Dude was BUSY.

https://i.imgur.com/LQmxUqZ.jpg

yeah, excellent album. kinda glad it's not as emotionally intense as the last one.

he’s one of the best

the best. sounding great as always. can’t wait to give it a full listen.

Saw him back at the 2013 Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival at really sick venue that is no more. Was by far the best thing I saw there and was this incredible constantly evolving series of beats and atmosphere that had me thinking he was the closest I'd seen to an Autechre set by someone else.

Them playing together would be amazing! So sad I wasn't in Sydney in time for that show.

really makes the lo-fi/hi-fi distinction meaningless. neither annoyingly polished nor carelessly murky. also, unlike autechre, there's a distinct emotional core that unifies the music. it's also politicized without being didactic. what im saying is, it rocks

can't believe it's been almost 15 years since this thread was started. "r&b concrete" is still an alarmingly concise and accurate description.

How is it politicized?

probably my favorite musician of the decade. thick smoke always hanging in the air

― brimstead, Wednesday, 3 November 2021 17:30 (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

one of my faves of the century. new album roolz

it totally roolz. and the deluxe LP edition comes with an lp copy of 88!

Funny, this one didn't immediately strike me as much as previous albums, but I went back to it after reading the praise on this thread and it definitely clicked the second time, enough so that I immediately ordered the LP. I think headphones really helped me appreciate this album, and I'm not typically a headphones kind of person

love this new album and also his recent mix for Mixmag

i really love this album but it always leaves me wanting to listen to Motorbass

https://actress.bandcamp.com/album/statik

new album out june 7

this is great news, especially since I missed out on the limited-to-100 12" Boomkat had available for about five minutes before it sold out.

I eventually came around to LXXXVIII after initially finding it a little dull, but hoping this one hearkens back to the Honest Jon's era. Smalltown Supersound weirdly seems like a good fit, somehow. that ad copy is horrendous though

Enjoyed the RA mix, a collage of unreleased material. Some of it definitely feels like sketches or demos, but it's nice to hear how his mind works and the little things that give it that uncanny vibe.

Lol I think only he could get away with an accompanying interview that terse (fewer than 30 words).

new record is insane

pure awesome

like rip and ghettoville combined

whut??! don't tease

This is excellent, but also has it really taken this long for an IDM artist to release a track titled “Cafe del Mars”?

Listened to this last night. First one since R.I.P I loved immediately. How great is "Rainlines?"

beautiful stuff

i love that the bandcamp description calls it "celestial and ecstatic." i.e. makes you want to be high while you listen to it. i'm getting some 93-97 ae vibes here. "ray" sounds like it could be on amber.

Can't find it now but am sure I had an email from a clothing company about an Actress figurine, recently.

"celestial and ecstaticexpansive"

xp I saw the action figure via this instagram post

https://www.instagram.com/p/C76cdnDsTqC/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Liking this a lot on first listen. Getting the Ae vibes and, I'm not sure he'll ever be bucolic, but Cluster as well.

definitely

Idk if this album immediately strikes me as top tier Actress, but I am enjoying it. Lots of sounds from the RA mix arranged in a more fully realized form, but still pretty stripped back.

Makes me want to hear LXXXVIII again though

in addition to the always sublime fields of ambient mist with various leaves sputtering around, parts of this evoke whispery minimal stuff like giegling, dial, smallville, etc.. <3

this goes places

https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/barbican-announces-actress-x-suzanne-ciani-present-concrete-waves

" we walk together" from the new Transkript 1 is top notch

Totally missed the announcement for this one, thanks!

"baby u lar" really incredible, daring, excited to get to the rest of it

This EP feels like the perfect compressed encapsulation of Actress’s essential appeal across 4 tracks. Whether you like fucked up alien Actress or uneasy dancefloor Actress or eerie romance Actress, there’s something here for you

Actress's music falls into a personal category along with Oneohtrix Point Never, Flying Lotus and a few others where I'm not sure I fully get it. Like, it's not that I haven't enjoyed parts of his work in the past, but I struggle to understand what he's going for a lot of the time, as in, "What is the concept or idea here?".

Generally I like his tracks that work as soporific edge-of-sleep music that creates these strange grey bubbly clouds in my mind.

But other times I'll just be thinking "What is happening here beyond someone experimenting with a bunch of seemingly random samples arranged in no specific way? What is he going for?"

That said, this EP is pretty nice so far.

I sort of know what you mean. His songs/albums aren't like watching a movie from start to finish I guess. It's more like walking around a weird foggy warehouse/museum with a few things in it, also the building keeps disappearing or something. It's like he's invoking/deploying some arcane atmosphere/weather/electrical patterns and, just letting them kinda run like sleep hypnosis or something. It's total disassociation music for me. Extra-musically there is something really refreshing about how he will often just really hone in on only a few specific cool sounds per track. The audacity of it, the courage and the trust in one's vision and the belief in one's audience(?) to do it the way he does. L instead of.. watching a juggler or a movie or something. proto-backrooms, idk, this is all crap writing here

The patience of it

Yes I agree with that.

The best Actress tracks will zero in on a mood and then just sit in and with it, the effect of which is uncanny because of the slipperiness and inbetweenness of the moods he concocts - their liminal, transitional quality makes them feel unstable, like they should resolve into something else but they stubbornly refuse to.

It would be a bit like playing at a slow speed a video of someone's face changing from a frown to a smile (or vice versa), and then trying to mimic and maintain the appearance of a facial expression at the halfway point.

Or, I'm reminded of the story of how Kate Bush made the outro of "Leave It Open": she recorded herself singing "we let the weirdness in", then played that backwards, and then she tried to sing what the backwards recording sounded like, and then played that backwards, to create this kind of uncanny quasi-intelligibility.

yeah the sounds themselves are really sui generis to him and he has such a delicate tension with everything. i always loved this thread title because "rnb concrete" feels like it elegantly captures it. he's definitely making musique concrete on a certain level, the sounds qua sounds are all so sensitively arranged even when it feels like he's "jamming" or going with something based on intuition. i'm looking forward to hearing the new one.

Banger posts, all. Definitely affirms how I've come to understand his approach. It is ephemeral and tricky to pin down, but thinking of his music this way might help me appreciate it a bit more.

There is definitely a "dream logic" thing going on in his work that I like

Wonderful posts here. I fell HARD for all his records up to Ghettoville, and then kind of lost track of his post-hiatus stuff. This thread has made me really excited to connect with his more recent stuff.

Same, although I dutifully bought and played the more recent albums as they were released, so I can't really say I lost track as much as I lost interest. That's not to say that there isn't some great music on everything from AZD to Statik, just that I never really felt like returning to those records like I did with, say, RIP. Which I guess speaks to the vaporous and slippery qualities of the music some of you are referring to here. By the music's very nature, it doesn't always try so hard to stick, I guess?

I really liked this one, though, which would have been easy to miss:

https://www.discogs.com/release/32359812-Actress-%D0%94%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD-%D0%94%D0%B6-%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%96%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%BC

Listening to Дарен Дж. Каннінгем right now, wow, that is very good as well!

Yeah, it's solid. It didn't seem to get much attention at the time but I thought it was better than Statik