- Actress enlists artificial intelligence to help compose this dazzling mini-album.
- Actress's recent collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra had the UK producer channelling his narcotic techno loops through analogue instruments and plastic bags. The result was a combination of acoustic and electronic sounds. They were processed, filtered and recomposed into a synthesis of live and recorded elements. That fusion of human and machine inputs has been a running theme for Actress's near 15-year career. Young Paint takes it to the next level.
Young Paint is described variously as an "AI sprite" and "learning program" that has "progressively emulated" Actress's musical process. The artificial intelligence project is released on the UK producer's new Werk__Ltd label and draws on the vast catalogue of Actress material produced in the decade since dropping 2008's Hazyville.
The so-called collaboration still sounds like an Actress record. Young Paint wheels a distorted beat through the crackling melody of "Travel Paint." A breathless, syncopated rhythm sequence flutters above a melancholic piano loop in "Kat Paint." There's a synth line filtered through delay and played beneath a high-tempo muted kick in "Neutral Paint," where the half-formed, repetitive melody loops abruptly like a skipping CD. It resembles the Clicks & Cuts style of '00s glitch, an approach that aimed to free sound from the artist's vision through the random rhythms of damaged hardware. The impulse is similar with Young Paint's algorithmic learning, except the machine has been taught to think by the man who made it.
Tracklist01. Travel Paint
02. Neutral Paint
03. Boy Paint
04. Twisty Paint
05. Ai Paint
06. Kat Paint