ACTRESS - Ghettoville

Darren Cunningham's fourth (and possibly last, at least under this alias) finds him returning to his own Werkdiscs imprint (now P&D'd by Ninja Tune), and on more than one occasion here coming back to the sluggish slow-jam edit approach of his initially-incognito Thriller project with Lukid from going on five years ago now.

"Although it kicks off with the merciless industrial grind and pulverizing bass hits of seven-minute monstrosity 'Forgiven,' Ghettoville concludes much less predictably with 'Rule,' a beguiling fragment of sampled rap put on loop. In some ways, this is a representative moment: consider the repetitiveness that's less like a techno track and more like a hardware malfunction, or the cruelty of cutting the final loop off mid-word. But it’s still a shocking shift in tone from the aggressively soulless machine sounds of 'Forgiven,' a tonal shift that Actress has been subtly working toward for most of Ghettoville's second half via the (relatively, tentatively) warm, human feel of the record's three best tracks, 'Gaze,' 'Rap,' and 'Don't.'" - Pretty Much Amazing