ACTRESS - STATIK

Statik rolls back free jazz curveballs and corrugated hip-hop beats to focus on windblown hiss and radio interference. There’s a wintry solemnity to even the more propulsive club tracks, like "Rainlines" and "Dolphin Spray." If the latter’s staccato square-wave synths bring to mind Lil Wayne’s "Lollipop," the gauzy atmospheres skew a little more towards jj’s "Ecstasy." The titular static is like a blanket of snow over everything, and it gets the starring role on the title track and "Doves Over Atlantis," cascading through the stereo field and seeming to turn itself inside out. The drums sound muffled throughout, and the paranoid mutterings and creepy vocal samples that filled the margins of past records have quieted for the time being, giving the album a more reassuring tone. Plucky sequencers give the music a meditative, expansive, almost New Age feel, suggesting that Actress has been diving into the catalogue of his new label Smalltown Supersound, which hosts Norwegian space-disco producers Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas. It's a more limited mode for the UK producer, but his sly wit still shines through.

• 01. Hell
• 02. Static
• 03. My Ways
• 04. Rainlines
• 05. Ray
• 06. Six
• 07. Cafe Del Mars
• 08. Dolphin Spray
• 09. System Verse
• 10. Doves Over Atlantis
• 11. Mello Checx