R.I.P. might be better off classified as an ambient album, electronic music almost entirely removed from "dance"; its very best moment is devoid of the latent afro-futurist impulses that underlie most of Cunningham's oeuvre. "N.E.W" emerges towards the end like cooling blasts of wind seeping out of the broken steam pipes of "The Lord's Graffiti." It wafts dreamily like vintage Brian Eno. This stunning five-minute mirage is displaced by the closer "IWAAD," where a violent kick drum stamps through the fog, carrying with it shards of strings and vocal gasps through a caustic, gurgling inferno. It's a heady end to a heady album, and one that shows Actress can make some of the most exciting techno around even after an album of ambient plinking and plonking. Not that he ever really makes techno. He just makes Actress music, and R.I.P. is the most enveloping and fully developed of his cultivated soundworlds yet.
-R.A.
A-
try
buy (cds out of stock, not paying for mp3 when one's potentially available so here's alt until restocked)
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