The producer known as ACTRESS and his r&b concrète

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..