Tag Archives: Ninja Tune

New music – Actress: Radical Frame (Ninja Tune)

Posted on by
Reply

posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the album’s Bandcamp page.

Darren Cunningham, the man behind Actress, has a compelling musical presence – one that makes his new album Radical Frame an essential listen. Returning to a more spiritual, deeper house music in the form of early Matthew Herbert, Cunningham has made an album of intriguing contrasts, short snippets juxtaposed with sprawling, piano-led house epics.

The text accompanying the album goes deeper: “The idea of the black avant-garde exists, as it were, oxymoronically – as if black, on the one hand, and avant-garde, on the other hand, each depends for its coherence on the exclusion of the other. Now this is probably an overstatement of the case. Yet it’s all but justified by a vast interdisciplinary text representative not only of a problematically positivist conclusion that the avant-garde has been exclusively Euro-American, but of a deeper, perhaps unconscious, formulation of the avant-garde as necessarily not black. Part of what I’m after now is this: an assertion that the avant-garde is a black thing.”- Fred Moten

When we go searching for a Black avant-garde, we have to be prepared to look in unexpected places. The route to a Black avant-garde involves walking down – what some might consider – peculiar highways. Where they see strangeness, a road leading them nowhere, we see nothing but beauty. The paths Darren Cunningham went down, the highways he took to make Actress, are a chapter in the story of the Black avant-garde. Cunningham the footballer. Cunningham the Wulfrunian. Cunningham the ex-footballer. Cunningham the DJ. Cunningham the Londoner. Cunningham the producer. Cunningham the painter. Cunningham the writer. Cunningham the composer. This is where the Black avant-garde in Britain is made. This is where you have to go to find it.

Across an expansive discography of more than ten LPs, Actress has created his own arcane language of hermetic references and inter-dimensional electronic composition.

Radical Frame arrives 18 years since debut album Hazyville, and it feels like an apotheosis. The image realised. We get the full gamut of Actress signatures. Short bursts of broken down music. Tiny sketches of zoomed-in sound. Refracted dance floor heat. And we get more. We get appearances from CASISDEAD on Live By You (another image, another mask) and Rainy Miller (another artist from the provinces, Preston).

Overchord, the centre of the album, is paired with its precursor Live By You. It arrives alongside a video by Anna van der Velde, featuring Cunningham trapped in a luxury prison of his own making, contained but not constrained.

Perhaps Radical Frame is a container for everything that Cunningham has built so far. A frame he is handing over to the next in line. The next artist to make their own way in the Black British avant-garde.”

Make sure you immerse yourself in this one! Radical Frame is out now on Ninja Tune.

Published post no.3,021 – Saturday 19 September 2026

#AmbientAugust no.4 – Funki Porcini: What Are You Looking At?

Posted on by
Reply

by Ben Hogwood

James Braddell has been remarkably prolific under this pseudonym – so with plenty more to explore, I’ll leave a high point from his Fast Asleep album on Ninja Tune from 2002. Very deep indeed…

The Funki Porcini Bandcamp page appears to be fully up to date, and has a very impressive discography

Published post no.2,968 – Tuesday 4 August 2026

New music – Tycho feat. Sea Lemon: Anotherwave (Ninja Tune / Mom + Pop)

Posted on by
Reply

by Ben Hogwood, using the Ninja Tune press release. Picture (c) Scott Hansen

2x GRAMMY® Award–nominated electronic icon Tycho has joined forces with acclaimed dreampop artist Sea Lemon for the oceanic new single, Anotherwave available today via Mom + Pop in the U.S. and Ninja Tune for the rest of the world.

As you will hear, it is another hot weather beauty from an ever-reliable source:

“I was driving late one night on a road trip through the California Central Valley when I first heard Sea Lemon’s music,” says Tycho’s Scott Hansen. “Eraser came on and immediately clicked; I think I listened to Close Up about four times in a row. I started imagining Natalie’s vocals on this new song I had been working on; the lush textures felt like a perfect match for the sound. So at the next stop, I reached out and sent some demos. I was really happy when she picked the particular song I had in mind; that’s usually a good sign. We started bouncing ideas back and forth, and pretty soon thereafter, Natalie tracked the vocals at her place. The track was originally a sparse, synth-driven piece, but once I got the vocals in place, I realized something was missing from the overall composition. So Zac came over and tracked some guitars, and it all came into focus quickly. This was one of those songs where I never really had to fight anything; it all just flowed, and those are the most fulfilling projects to work on. It was really an honor to work with such a talented artist as Natalie, and I’m very proud of what we created together.”

”When Scott (Tycho) reached out to me and shared this song, I instantly felt a connection to the underwater-like quality of the sounds and textures,” says Sea Lemon (a.k.a. Seattle, WA-based musician Natalie Lew). “I started writing lyrics about being ‘caught in another wave,’ which turned into sort of the anthemic lyrics that get repeated throughout the song. I’ve been such a fan of Tycho for years, and getting the chance to work with him on a track is a total dream. Scott has an extremely creative, collaborative way of working, which makes coming together on a track like this a huge joy.”

Anotherwave marks the latest in an ongoing series of diverse collaborations for Tycho, including previous alliances with artists spanning ODESZA, Maggie Rogers, Little Dragon, Leon Bridges, Death Cab for Cutie, and more. The track follows the release earlier this year of Forge, a compelling instrumental companion piece to 2025’s Boundary Rider, a collaboration with Interpol’s Paul Banks. 2024 saw Tycho continuing to expand the parameters and possibilities of electronic music with its engrossing sixth album, Infinite Health, co-produced by Hansen with Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor with backing from guitarist Zac Brown and drummer Rory O’Connor.

Published post no.2,934 – Wednesday 1 July 2026

New Music – Tycho: Forge (Ninja Tune / Mom + Pop)

Posted on by
Reply

by Ben Hogwood, with text lifted from the press release

Tycho has announced and released Forge, the follow-up to (and early incarnation of)  Boundary Rider, his recent collaboration with Paul Banks of Interpol.

Speaking about the track, Tycho (aka Scott Hansen) says: “Boundary Rider started life as a demo called Forge, a driving open-ended extension of the Epoch-era sound. I originally sent a pretty stripped back version to Paul Banks to see if he was interested in contributing vocals, which later informed the direction of that arrangement. After completing that version, I revisited the original to see if I could draw a compelling instrumental out of it. This is sometimes difficult with a song written with vocals in mind — it’s hard to find the elements to tie it all together once the vocals are gone. But with this one it ended up feeling nicely balanced just by pushing Zac’s guitars to the front a bit, retaining the isolated sound of the vocal version while opening up more space for the instrumentation to breathe.”

As you will hear while listening to the track below, Hansen’s point is proved with music of warmth and poise, yet also positive energy – such as that felt with the onset of Spring-like weather here in Britain!

Published post no.2,820 – Thursday 5 March 2026

New music – Tycho & Paul Banks (Interpol): Boundary Rider (Ninja Tune)

Posted on by
Reply

adapted from the press release by Ben Hogwood

Tycho – project of celebrated San Francisco songwriter, musician and producer Scott Hansen – announces Boundary Rider, his new collaboration with Paul Banks of Interpol. 

With Interpol cited by Hansen as a key touchstone on his own productions Boundary Rider sees Tycho in a decidedly post-rock mode, with Banks’ yearning vocals delivered over crisp percussion, swirling guitar riffs and fleeting synths. Watch below:

“Interpol has long been one of my biggest influences so I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate with Paul on a song,” explains Hansen. “Boundary Rider started life as an atmospheric instrumental song titled “Forge” that I had been working on here and there for a couple of years. When I met Paul and started thinking about what songs might connect with his voice, Forge immediately came to mind.”

“I sent him a demo along with the prompt “Boundary Rider”. I had been reading about the lives of Boundary Riders during the 1930’s, people who patrolled and maintained fences in the vast expanse of the Western Australian outback. There was something about this solitary existence that I felt resonated with the song and the deep sense of isolation in Paul’s lyrics brought this into focus.”

Published post no.2,696 – Thursday 23 October 2025