Actress - Splazsh

One of the upshots of dance music's active compartmentalization-- into genres and subgenres and niches aligned with certain kinds of basslines or BPM-- is the exalted space it affords work that jams the system. If an album proves unique, we celebrate it. And then that album makes us think all the more scrupulously about the system it happened to jam. Actress's Splazsh is one of those albums. Actress-- a DJ/producer from London named Darren Cunningham-- slots into a recognizable realm of artists working in the wake of dubstep. But little, if anything, in his sound shares much with dubstep as it's most often understood. His bass isn't very big, his snares don't crack in isolation, his atmospheres don't heave in the air of cavernous negative-space.