Since he burst onto the scene with his sibylline project ‘‘ almost two decades ago, – real name Darren J. Cunningham – has emerged as one of the most daring sound technicians in the UK. With his new album, ‘‘, Cunningham seeks to challenge the monopolisation and whitewashing of avant-garde electronic music. Through a probing collection that resists form or function – pulling from every era in a career that has bent and morphed modern classical codas with machine funk, dusky techno, sprawling ambient pieces and grime’s impish percussive quality – Cunningham reorients “avant-garde” as a Black invention.

Opening to muffled transmissions – ‘The Experiment’ and ‘Gimme Tha’ Fuckin’ Money Man’ – the listener is implanted in a time-worn, nocturnal city realm. There’s a mirage-like, ashen feel to proceedings as ‘Live By You’ offloads morsels of programmed drums which hit like stray sibilants as CASISDEAD’s inner city sermon – spliced and pitched to dizzying effect – vaporises into a chromed-lined, neo-noir escapade.

There’s a controlled stasis to ‘Radical Frame’; this world lingers in subtle, subdued sound design, in the quieter, stranger moments just before dawn. That’s no more evident than on ‘Overchord’, a searching prayer wrapped up in a sedate piano-primed techno crawler. The penultimate track ‘Paris’ is a misty-eyed jazz collage with a faint club affectation, and the mercurial ‘Withending’ merges vocal interference with a pixellated fusion of darkly elegant keys and slow-groove tech house.

The album culminates with the marathon number ‘Sheets’ featuring Preston’s Rainy Miller – “another artist from the provinces”. Even with Miller’s existential musings, nothing about this number feels oppressive. Cunningham contours sound waves in rhythmic flux before they cede to Miller’s hymn, the listener led into the open expanse of the sea by his echoed falsetto and the crashing of waves.

‘Radical Frame’ is Actress at his most essential, mercurial and uncompromising. Often wordless and inscrutable, Cunningham is able to imbue this inter-dimensional work with feeling and intention. If ‘Radical Frame’ ends up being the final Actress release, it’s an emphatic addendum to a career that has consistently challenged, and reconditioned, what high-concept, homegrown electronic music can be.

8/10