Actress x London Contemporary Orchestra - LAGEOS

“At a first glance, techno and contemporary classical music do not seem like ideal partners. One, a bass-heavy hedonistic genre designed for dancefloors, the other suited to the calm of the concert hall. Yet Darren Cunningham, aka electronic producer Actress, and the London Contemporary Orchestra have built their careers in pushing boundaries of genre.

Both sets of artists explore the hybridity between the electronic and the acoustic: the LCO regularly records experimental film scores, including Jonny Greenwood’s recent anxiety-inducing compositions for You Were Never Really Here, and last year Actress performed a live rendition of Steve Reich’s 1988 work Different Trains. On Lageos, rather than have the orchestra approximate the alien sounds of Actress’s electronics, they formulate a new sonic palette that is in equal measures intriguing and unsettling.

The album is often upbeat: strings streak in between clattering, fairground rhythms on Galya Beat, while Hubble and N.E.W. are softer, more melodic interpretations of Actress’s previous releases. It is in moments of quiet ambience, though, that Lageos excels, blurring the boundaries between static and harmony on Momentum or between creaking double bass and kick drum on Voodoo Possee, Chronic Illusion. A challenging yet satisfying listen.” – The Guardian

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