I never met an Actress track I didn't immediately love until the first time I heard "Voodoo Posse Chronic Illusion". Londoner Darren Cunningham has been on an astounding run since his debut, 2008 LP Hazyville, but he's never been an easy artist. His abstracted techno tends to appear opaque, yet somehow retains its transparency by revealing layers upon layers of sound hidden in the crushed frequencies. You have to look for it at first, but even with his most difficult music, somehow you know there's genius lurking underneath. With the Silver Cloud EP, however, I wondered for the first time whether some of his magical, digital dust was missing.
Of course, I was wrong. Which I figured out after about 10 listens. But there is something that feels different about the Silver Cloud EP, his first new music since 2012's R.I.P.. That record had a strangely homemade and organic feel to it, like finger-painting with pixels. While Silver Cloud uses the same palette of rainy-day greyscale crackle, the three-track EP sees a return of sorts to beat-oriented material, following R.I.P.'s pastoral landscapes. It also marks a homecoming to Cunningham's own Werk Discs label, having spend time over at Honest Jon's.
The EP starts off with "Voodoo Posse Chronic Illusion", one of Actress' longest tracks to date. Its palette is plaintive, but the way it methodically, mindlessly repeats forever with little variation is almost aggressive-- like a particularly hostile staring contest. This dimension feels less friendly than usual, maybe even lazy. But lay on the lapping ebb and you'll be pulled into deep relaxation with every mangled guitar strum; it's lo-fi new age music. You'll hardly even notice the brittle percussion come in and nudge everything along so beautifully and fluidly.
The flipside is even stranger. Much of the talk surrounding the EP-- which was pressed as a sneaky white label before its proper digital release-- was flustered frustration about whether the vinyl rips floating around online were at the correct speed. It's easy to understand the confusion: these two tracks are syrupy slow, mining the same dungeon house territory as Andy Stott's recent work, all demonic vocal samples and engine room churn.
Both tracks are cut from the same cloth, but different in mission. "Silver Cloud Dream Come True" is illusory, industrial techno beat thin like malleable metal, marking each bar with a portentous chime. "Floating in Ecstasy", meanwhile, is unlike much else in the Cunningham catalog: It's drenched in tape hiss, and the synth noises have more in common with Wolf Eyes than anything else. Here he's taking a rare cue from someone else, the lo-fi house of collectives like L.I.E.S.. It's a move that already suits Cunningham's distinctly decayed, sawn-off palette. Like all three tracks on Silver Cloud, it's unusual and a little more impenetrable than usual. But like Cunningham's entire oeuvre, each track unwinds into a tapestry of intense sonic detail if you just give it a little time to recline.
