Splazsh
*Splazsh* is one of those albums that plays better as an album than as individual songs, giving it a gestalt quality; it\'s a painting more than a series of brushstrokes. Where Actress\' first album, *Hazyville*, used much of the same vocabulary—an echo of deteriorated rave and ambient influence—*Splazsh* is a more perfected evolution of that sound. Starting with the near-nine-minute \"Hubble\" (a song that should by all rights grow tiresome with a persistent four-to-the-floor), there\'s never a sense of lost energy in the gentle ebb and flow of the track programming. In fact, perhaps part of why this works so well as a cohesive piece is the fact that Actress never seems to make anything longer (or shorter) than it needs to be. There aren\'t any intentionally DJ-friendly intros or outros, and some perfectly dance floor–friendly selections like \"Senorita\" are more like tone poems, clocking in at just a few minutes. Whether by virtue of excellent editing, production, or something more ephemeral and indefinable, *Splazsh* is an immediate classic; it\'s an expression carving out its own moment in time.
Nominally working under the umbrella of dubstep, this London producer has called his music "R&B concrète"-- a celebration of the abstract and the pop.
Sharper, sprawling, and more bent in comparison to 2008's Hazyville -- Darren Cunningham's first Actress album -- Splazsh is a brilliantly malformed collision of dubstep, IDM, garage, and experimental techno.
Electronic music’s latest “It” kid is Darren Cunningham, founder of the pivotal Werk Discs label and the solo artist known by the transgendered...