Karma & Desire
Released
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It’s to Darren Cunningham’s benefit that vibe started infringing on the importance of genre as a definitive artistic marker right around the time the first Actress records started dropping in the late 2000s. And on Karma & Desire, the vibe is subdued yet troubled existentialist contemplation, with sparse pianos, soaring-drone chords, a techno-diasporic but distinctly reductionist approach to beats, and his first-ever slate of actual vocal collaborators upholding an unsettling yet liberating feeling of confronting melancholy head-on. The songs featuring vocals only add further thematic ambiguity: London neo-soulster Sampha is pitch-warped into malfunctioning-VR uncanny-valley surrealism in “Many Seas, Many Rivers,” Brooklyn art-pop singer Zsela murmurs hushed invocations of heaven’s unattainability on “Angels Pharmacy” and “Remembrance,” and L.A. techno producer/polymath Aura T-09 finds herself on “Loveless” and “Turin” turning dance-hook desire into cracked-mirror distortions that get more enigmatic with each repetition.