Actress

Under his primary alias of Actress — and an assortment of fleeting guises — Darren Cunningham is behind some of the least predictable, least classifiable electronic music of his time. Since his modest 2004 debut with the No Tricks EP, the British producer has juggled diverse inspirations including early-’80s funk and electro, art rock, raw and classicist house, and noise, while putting a fresh spin on the forms to decayed, disorienting effect. His productions, once self-termed “R&B concrète,” have consequently dumbfounded some DJs, while they’ve been devoured by more adventurous jocks within the realms of house, techno, dubstep, and what has become known as deconstructed club music. One of the most acclaimed sonic experimentalists, Cunningham has often landed on The Wire’s annual Top 50, starting with Splazsh (2010) and continuing through AZD (2017). He has kept listeners guessing with LAGEOS (2018), featuring the London Contemporary Orchestra; Karma & Desire (2020), incorporating vocals from the likes of Zsela and Sampha; and the closely released LXXXVIII (2023) and Statik (2024), containing some of his trippiest and most direct material. Also in 2024, he released Darren J. Cunningham, a continuous mix of otherwise unissued originals. Cunningham played clarinet as a youth in his native Wolverhampton, England, but he put the instrument down to concentrate on football, which he played into his early twenties as a striker for West Bromwich Albion F.C. After an injury scotched his athletic career, he turned to music, first as a DJ and eventually as a producer, beginning with a Roland Groovebox and a Dictaphone. He made a proper debut on his Werk Discs label in 2004 with the No Tricks EP. Easily the most straightforward release in his discography, it at least hinted at the scuffed and bent qualities that eventually characterized his output. Cunningham spent a few years perfecting a follow-up, Hazyville, released on Werk in 2008. Its promise was fulfilled with his exceptional second album, Splazsh, which arrived on the Honest Jon's label and topped The Wire’s Top 50 chart for 2010. By that point, Cunningham had remixed tracks by Alex Smoke, Kode9, and Joy Orbison, among others. Additionally, Werk had become one of the most revered and progressive independents, a trusted outlet for the likes of Lone, Zomby, and Lukid. In 2012, Cunningham released the third Actress album, R.I.P., his most abstract and singular work to that point. The same year, he collaborated with artist Yayoi Kasuma for a performance at London’s Tate Modern gallery and remixed tracks for John Cale and Kasabian. The producer’s fourth album, Ghettoville, was released in 2014 on Ninja Tune. Cunningham ominously proclaimed the bleak set to be “the bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image,” but an installment in the !K7 label’s long-running DJ-Kicks mix series was out by the end of 2015. Another production album supported by Ninja Tune, the highly conceptualized AZD, arrived a couple years after that, just after Cunningham’s secondary aliases — which previously included Levantis and GNESIS — multiplied with a trio of limited cassette singles as That Knightsbridge OG, Dial 666 8100, and Bank of England. Cunningham quickly returned later in 2017 with the Audio Track 5 EP, the first fruit of a collaboration with London Contemporary Orchestra, with whom he performed the previous year in London and Moscow. An adventurous full-length with LCO, LAGEOS, followed in 2018, as did an eponymous EP credited to Young Paint, billed as a collaboration between Cunningham and a “learning program.” His activity picked up again in 2020 with 88, a freely available mixtape of sorts that led to the proper LP Karma & Desire. Cunningham’s most traditionally collaborative recording, Karma & Desire was augmented by instrumentation from Kara-Lis Coverdale and multiple appearances from Zsela and Sampha, among other vocalists. “AZD Surf,” a collaboration with Mount Kimbie’s Kai Campos, appeared in 2022. The producer then released Dummy Corporation, an EP led by a 19-minute title track. He also remixed Tirzah’s “Sink In” and contributed to John Cale’s Mercy before making his next full-length statement with the relatively immediate (if still idiosyncratic) LXXXVIII, released in October 2023. Only eight months later, he was back with the similarly accessible Statik, issued on Smalltown Supersound. The Oslo-based label had previously commissioned Cunningham for a Carmen Villain remix. Later in the year, Smalltown issued Darren J. Cunningham (printed in Ukrainian), the producer’s Resident Advisor podcast from earlier in the year, which consisted entirely of exclusive material. ~ Andy Kellman