Interview | Actress

An inscrutable force in electronic music, Danny Turner chats to Darren J. Cunningham about his celestial-sounding tenth Actress album, Statik

© Ola Rindal

Prior to becoming a producer, Darren J. Cunningham (aka Actress) was destined to become a professional footballer until a serious injury curtailed his hopes and dreams. A devotee of techno culture, the devastated teen turned to his second passion, DJing and music production. Receiving a grant to study recording arts at university, the inquisitive Cunningham moved to London and dived headfirst into underground club culture.

Within a couple of years, Cunningham was recording off-kilter tech house and sending hopeful demos to Detroit collective Underground Resistance. Debuting as Actress in 2008 with the critically acclaimed Hazyville on his own Werk Discs label, the artist quickly established himself as one of the leading voices in leftfield electronic music, consolidating his reputation on further LPs Splazsh and R.I.P before exhausting his production aesthetic on cryptic fourth LP, Ghettoville.

Following Actress’ return in 2017 with the comparatively light-hearted concept album AZD, Cunningham would widen his sonic palette and display his influences by collaborating on a reinterpretation of Steve Reich’s contemporary classic Different Trains and, later, Sin (x) an artistic tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen. This year sees Actress’ tenth studio album, Statik, pay testament to Cunningham’s uncanny ability to transport the listener through a journey of celestial, meditative mood pieces.

People may not know that you signed for West Bromwich Albion as a teenager. In retrospect, had your career not been derailed by injury, do you think you would have chosen football over music?

“It would have been impossible for me to have answered the question at the time, but growing up I was 100% dedicated to football. I’d been playing since the age of 6 and signed for West Brom aged 8, so I was institutionalised and had tunnel vision when it came to the game. After I was sat in a hospital bed aged 19, staring starkly at the bonfire of my career, I had to make a decision. I’d grown up on music and always loved it from an aural dance perspective, but at the age of 12 I remember seeing a documentary that followed Shy FX when he was making one of his big anthem tunes. It gave me an insight into how to make music with computers and split samples and was the first time that I thought, wow; this is how jungle is done. That was a very important moment in terms of seeing the process, and it stayed in my head.”

How did things proceed from there?

“I’d had a recurring injury over the course of three years and at some point made a quick decision to buy some turntables and a DJ mixer package that I saw on the back of a music magazine. I practised how to beat match with my leg in plaster on a chair in my mum and dad’s garage. Mates would come round and play tunes and I learned how to mix, which I picked up quite quickly. It became a pastime for the six weeks that I was in plaster and was the first time I started thinking about taking my career in a different direction. I was constantly sending DJ mixes and tapes to a competition in a music magazine called Bedroom Bedlam.