Darren Cunningham, aka London-based electronic musician Actress, has announced the details of his long-awaited fourth album Ghettoville. Its existence was first revealed around the release of last year’s eerie and impressionistic R.I.P, when it was suggested that it would arrive soon after its predecessor’s release via Cunningham’s own Werk Discs label. After eighteen months or so of waiting and a single 12" in the meantime – this year’s freaky, fractured Silver Cloud – it’s now been announced that Ghettoville will be released on January 27th through Werk, in three formats: CD, download, and as a 3LP boxset with a 32-page art book and CD included, hinting that it may well have an extended runtime.
There are few direct hints as to how it may sound, but we’re told it’s a sequel to his excellent 2008 debut album Hazyville and will "share a similar rugged style". We’re also given a few enigmatic clues via a special section of the Werk Discs site, which have a finality of tone that hints this could be the end of the road for the Actress project.
"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 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."
While always known for abstracting the genres that have been his primary influences, including various strains of UK dance music and Detroit techno, R.I.P found Cunningham shifting still further from the more recognisable genre-linked beat structures of earlier albums Splazsh and Hazyville. ("R.I.P is more like electron microscopy," we said in our review. "Here he’s delved so deep between the beats that they’re often difficult to discern clearly".) The cryptic suggestions we’re given as to Ghettoville‘s nature suggests that it may well slip still further into its own abstracted space.
To accompany the release of Ghettoville, Werk have excitingly announced that they will also be issuing Hazyville in January for the first time on vinyl, in a 2CD boxset. It will be remastered, and will also be rereleased on CD.
Ghettoville‘s tracklist runs as follows:
‘Forgiven’
‘Street Corp’
‘Corner’
‘Rims’
‘Contagious’
‘Birdcage’
‘Our’
‘Time’
‘Towers’
‘Gaze’
‘Skyline’
‘Image’
‘Don’t’
‘Rap’
‘Frontline’
‘Rule’
