[Honest Jon’s Records]

Hazyville, Darren Cunningham’s 2008 debut LP as Actress, remains enchanting because of its unrelenting uncanniness, seamlessly crossing genres while deep in narcosis, an elegant record aimed solely at emotional resonance. Like Hazyville, Cunningham’s second album, Splazsh is stylistically diverse, its shapeshifting unified by his predilection for clipped vocal stabs and subtle, droning atmospherics. It’s often rougher than its predecessor, its genre shifts are more drastic, and so perhaps the mood is not as wholly gray. Regardless of any new inflections, though, an Actress track still sounds like precious little else.

The album kicks off with two previously-released cuts, both of which are among Cunningham’s best work: an abridged version of “Hubble,” from the second Thriller 12″, and a remix of Various Production’s “Lost.” The former hypnotically imitates human-made mechanics in space, smothering a stunted, shivering house beat in slowly oscillating drones. “Lost” uses a similar palette, retaining the broken, ethereal aura with a slightly faster pace, as wispy R&B vocals mingle with bleary melodic tones. The results are entirely haunting, like Theo Parrish’s “Soul Control” if Alena Waters sang while slowly disintegrating; all resigned, inky regret. The churning menace of “Get Ohn (Fairlight Mix)” (seemingly a chopped & screwed version of “Slowjam,” which appeared on Martyn’s Fabric mix) is another highlight. A distorted, swung drum pattern is scattered through blotches of bass weight while an aching alien voice repeats the titular phrase; it’s ominously funky, like a dance hit re-recorded until it’s tape-warped and barely intelligible.

Much of the album is made up of impressionist genre studies tinged with Cunningham’s hallmarks. The relatively perky “Always Human” flirts with microhouse and the choppier end of garage in its cut-up arrangement, while “Let’s Fly” feels like an homage to Juan Atkins’ Infiniti, linear and dreamy with a vague, murmuring vocal. “Purple Splazsh” evokes a lost Minneapolis instrumental; an overdriven guitar loop and a minimal stop-start drum pattern repeat atop a shimmering, ghostly undercurrent. On “Wrong Potion,” the record takes a sudden turn into brutalist power electronics. The final three tracks follow this trend, all suffused with a metallic clang, recalling Cunningham’s three-track EP on NonPlus+ earlier in the year, as well as Pan Sonic, or Shake’s Levitate Venice. This closing harshness works jarringly, awaking the listener from the hazy complacency of the record’s body. These tracks feel almost violent, a collective warning about becoming too comfortable with technology. Splazsh is essential listening because it represents techno at its purest, as a truly avant-garde music; its engagement with the past only reinforces its futuristic vision. If Hazyville was escapist in the creation of its own soundworld, Splazsh seems more like the product of contemporary interaction, still cloaked in anxious haze, but more manic, visceral and immediate.