Ghettoville

Album review

When the January 2014 release date and track list of Darren Cunningham's fourth Actress album was announced, the artist wrote some accompanying words that could be summarized as a resigned "whatever," or as an emoticon signifying a sigh, or as a rant ghost-written by Jaden Smith. Cunningham referred to the "conclusion of the Actress image" and, like a micro-blogger who just witnessed a miscue from a professional athlete, signed off with "R.I.P Music 2014." Whether the missive was deadly serious or not, there's no way to listen to Ghettoville without hearing disintegration and dread. It's even bleaker, more industrial and decayed, than 2012's R.I.P. There are more moments of forward motion here than on that previous album. They're all captivating on some level. The trudging "Rims" resembles a Neptunes instrumental -- Kelis' "Young, Fresh n' New," for instance -- mangled and pitched into a tub of liquid acid. "Birdcage" scrapes and tumbles with weaponized hi-hats and decayed kick drums as one of the album's funkiest and most straightforward moments. Another, "Gaze," despite being deeply corroded, bangs as hard as any other Actress track, while the lean "Skyline" jacks with a deep bassline, seemingly piped through a wind tunnel. Toward the end, the mood softens and even lifts a bit. "Rap" makes a saxophone slow jam slower, with the refrain "Wrap yourself around me" repeated to part-comic/part-alluring effect. Finale "Rule" is light-hearted hip-house as only Cunningham could make it -- a clumpy shuffle as a beat, chipper synthesized organ notes bent into blips, an emphatic MC transformed into a syrup-addled Mushmouth. If this is the end of Actress, it ties up a near-perfect discography of experimental electronic music.
© Andy Kellman /TiVo