Actress

No metaphor can adequately capture the expansiveness of Actress’ influences and source material—a jaw or a camera’s aperture can only open so wide. The London electronic musician, born Darren Cunningham, is a master of texture and tension, weaving together wildly disparate raw elements to find their points of connection and draw out their sharp diversions. Beginning with 2008’s Hazyville and its follow-up, 2010’s Splazsh, Actress has pulled from offshoots of dance music both contemporary and long established, as well as the poetry of John Milton and the thump of populist hip-hop. There are times he eschews steady beats altogether, as he does frequently on 2012’s overwhelmingly acclaimed R.I.P., and others when he not only locates a pocket, but plunges so deep into it that you feel as if he might never reemerge. With 2017’s AZD, Actress pivoted away from his instinctual, laptop-first setup and began embracing older production equipment, a natural evolution for someone who has always flattened time as if it was nothing.