Actress’s “Ghettoville” down to soda ash

by Whitney Richardson

London-based artist Actress, Darren Cunningham, rolls out Ghettoville on January 28. In Ghettoville, you can cut and paste spirits over the minimal synth, listen to your cousin in the background for added depth, or collage it with an image of you hanging upside down for a listen, letting the blood rush to your head and fill the page. The album is considered the sequel to the 2008 Actress debut Hazyville and id foreboded to be the last album under the alias.

Supremely basic – like a heartbeat – the tunes move through dismal to evocative. The quicksand of sucking on the straw for droplets. No leaf – no life –  I get the feeling it’s been a long time since we’ve seen the sky. An acid bleach quality, shades pulled to white as the color drains as in a waiting room – pooling the listlessness of a tunnel transience and the dying wisp of an engine. Here arrives the twisted nature of a stomach eating itself – the hungry ghost.

The recurring audio of a repetitive throat clearing highlights to micro-heightened pull of the narrator. “Contagious” winds a self-perpetuated bellowing that parallels self-perpetuated gloom. Following the track, a shift occurs to the use of upper palettes of pastel xylophone & brass rings. “Birdcage” hums a worker-beat – a determined, tight concentration on the rhythm, feathered by a chirps and rustles song of relief

At the base, a cast of snake skin – textural, detached, & abandoned. The album sends no tweak but a heavy dissolve. “Gaze” harpens flash of color and then a new fade to ghost dance floors, vibrating silhouettes of hush. Spiral down to “Rule,” the final song on the album; vocals rev the listener into a tizzy, bouncing affirmative disapproval beside the xylophone’s call, reminiscent of Koopa Troopa Beach. We’re left wondering, ”Is this the end?”

Ghettoville is out on January 27, 2014 on iTunes and in the Ninja Shop.