Actress returns with ‘Radical Frame’ and yes, it’s every bit as wild as you hoped

Actress is back, and he’s brought a whole new world with him. Darren Cunningham’s long-running project has just dropped ‘Radical Frame’, out now via Ninja Tune on vinyl, CD and digital. It lands 18 years after debut album ‘Hazyville’, and the critics are already tuned in.

The Praise Is Rolling In

Early reactions to ‘Radical Frame’ have been glowing:

“A suite of abstraction and effervescence, held together by restless musicality” – 4*, MOJO

“What a world we live in where [Actress] can make a lasting career from techno as experimental and enjoyable as this” – Loud & Quiet

“Actress continues to embrace new orbits and ranges of thoughts with music of great intimacy and characterisation” – Electronic Sound

Deep Cuts and Big Moments

Last month’s Withending got the Guardian swooning: “The beautifully intricate synth refrain at the heart of this track undulates as beguilingly as kelp in the ocean deep, dragged deeper by insistent kick drum and haunted by vocal sprites.”

The heart of the record is Live By You, featuring CASISDEAD, paired with Overchord. Mixmag called the latter “an atmospheric, spine-tingling track that combines ricocheting percussion, ballad-esque keys and mournful vocals”. Then comes the finale: new single Sheets, featuring Rainy Miller, a 16-minute epic that closes the album out.

‘Radical Frame’ track list

1. The Experiment
2. Gimme Tha’ Fuckin’ Money Man
3. Live By You (feat. CASISDEAD)
4. Overchord
5. Cosmo
6. Withending
7. Paris
8. Sheets (feat. Rainy Miller)

Stream / buy ‘Radical Frame’

The Actress Image

Cunningham once described Actress as an image: a picture, an idea, a lens for looking out at the world and back at himself across more than ten LPs. He’s also said his music tends to start with “a symbol, or a grabbed moment.”

You can hear it all over the catalogue. There’s the man he saw walking around South London with his life in a shopping trolley, who became ‘Ghettoville’ (2014). There’s the chessboard he stumbled across in L.A.’s Pershing Park, which turned into ‘LXXXVII’ (2023). And there’s that feeling on ‘Splazsh’ (2010) of music pounding through the club walls while you stand on the other side in the smoking area, catching your breath. Wordless compositions, painted with the Actress image, that let us see the world the way he does.

Live in the Infinite

That world is now open 24/7 with ∞∞ INFINITE ACTRESS ∞∞, a constantly evolving stream of two decades of released and unreleased music. Few artists have a catalogue deep, compelling and enduring enough to pull off something this size, and it’s one of electronic music’s most distinctive bodies of work in one endless station.

Catch Actress Live

Actress is taking ‘Radical Frame’ on the road at select dates across the US and Europe this autumn-winter. That includes headline shows in San Francisco and LA, plus appearances at Pitchfork Festival London and Unsound in New York and Krakow.

• 09 Oct 2026 – Unsound, Krakow, PL (live)
• 10 Oct 2026 – Robot Festival, Bologna, IT (live)
• 15 Oct 2026 – III Points Satellite, Miami, USA (DJ)
• 16 Oct 2026 – August Hall, SF, USA (live)
• 19 Oct 2026 – Echoplex, LA, USA (live)
• 21 Oct 2026 – Unsound NY, NYC, USA (live)
• 30 Oct 2026 – TBA, Barcelona, ES (live)
• 05 Nov 2026 – Pitchfork Festival, London, UK (live)
• 12 Dec 2026 – Marathon! @ Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, FR (live)