Albums
Darren ‘Actress’ Johnson has veered all over the place in his unashamedly eccentric career. His breakthrough album ‘Splazsh’ had some stunning experimental techno but was marred by random-seeming left turns and sudden edits. However, rather than compromise on that, he’s gone several steps further away from standard dance structure and into abstraction and ambience here – and it’s all the better for it. ‘RIP’ is in the truest sense experimental, veering from lo-fi to sparklingly clear, terrifying to utterly beautiful, 90s retro-sounding to as new as anything you’ve ever heard, but all united by a single, deeply trippy vision into which you have to throw yourself completely or not at all. Magic.
File under Head-trip explorations
Download ‘Jardin’, ‘Serpent’, ‘Caves Of Paradise’, ‘N E W’
Like this? Try Aphex Twin ‘Selected Ambient Works 1985–92’ (R&S)
