HTRK and Actress' Sacred Ritual

When Now or Never announced that the HTRK and Actress would be performing collaboratively at Melbourne Recital Centre, collective interest was sparked, though not without a healthy dose of head-scratching. It’s curious to think what exactly unites the artists. TJ Hertz, aka Objekt, argues that conventional genre definitions are becoming less useful, as listeners gravitate towards particular sonic qualities. In this manner, we find a link.
Darren Cunningham, aka Actress, ex-football player turned abstract electronica extraordinaire, has probed ever deeper into the depths of experimental electronic and sample-based music. His seminal debut album Hazyville (2007) precipitated the lo-fi house trend that would proliferate YouTube in the mid 2010s, presenting a series of fuzzed-out, loop-centric house tracks, which begin media-res, idling for several minutes before skittering back into washes of noise. Ghettoville (2013)signalled a turn into more experimental territory, with de-quantised industrial G-funk, leading all the way to vapourwave. Cunningham even played a DJ set of vintage trance at the Outro Lado stage of Portuguese festival, Waking Life, back in 2023. Last year’s LXXXVIII marked a return to a distinctively retro sound. its me (g8) teases soulful hip-hop sampling, while azd rain (g1) delivers Rephlex styled IDM. Cunningham’s indiscriminate interrogation of electronic genre continues to be interesting, even if he seems to be fixated on days gone by. With this penchant for un-spooling and de-stabilising grooves, Cunningham displays interest in what technology sounds like when it breaks down, not just when it’s working optimally.
The modus operandi of HTRK (pronounced ‘hate rock’) is similar, operating as a band (of sorts) since the mid 2000s. With 2022’s Rhinestones, the duo took a leap of faith in abandoning their post-punk and industrial influences, leaning into a sparser, and markedly cleaner acoustic sound. For many, with its whispered vocals, glittering reverbs and washed-out 808, Rhinestones is the gem of their career. However, Standish and Yang distinguish themselves as aesthetic tastemakers in their own right, contributing occasionally on NTS. Standish also sports an esoteric oeuvre of solo work in which she continues her off-kilter interpretation of singer-songwriter music, full of found sounds and musique-concrete influences. The gloss can be pretty, though HTRK keep one foot in the darkness.
The recital centre performance, which was only prepared a week or two in advance, incorporated an extended experimental set, accompanied by a video work in which a camera recorded a journey on foot through the subways and streets of New York. The onscreen protagonist navigates the alcoves and cisterns of the litter-strewn urban sprawl, dancing in front of department stores, strutting down concrete strips as dog-tags jingle from her neck. Wealth, excess, depravity and destitution all feature here. The video revealed itself as a loop as the events onscreen repeated themselves, sound tracked differently and carrying a stranger emotional valence than the first time around. There is perhaps a resonance too as an exercise in loop-based composition.
To the chagrin of many, the artists leaned happily to the more experimental, and even aggressive sides of their respective styles. The opening movement resembled a sort of dirge in power electronics, with heavily phased synths evoking drone metal, alongside booming industrial drums. Standish softly played some wooden percussion as the soundscape swelled around her. These dark ambient idling movements were bookended by brief glimmers of light; signature-glittering Actress arps floating in, before emerging into a teaser of a vocal track, where the instrumentation took on a more recognisable shape, including what sounded to be an alternative version of Reverse Déjà vu, off Rhinestones (2022).
As Cunningham stood to the side over an interconnected web of wires and modules, swarming around the glow of a laptop screen, Standish occupied the centre of the stage, as Yang stood to the left, playing guitar and occasionally operating some electronics positioned below him. Backlit with flashing orange haze, the trio’s faces were cast in shadow, heightening the mystique.
The performance certainly was not met with unanimous favour. Many patrons remarked feeling bored during, suggesting that there was nothing to hold onto in the sparse and often beatless and voiceless hour-long run time, though the trio must be given credit for creating an entirely new show, and not just performing collaborative versions of their respective songs. To their credit, the piece will likely stand as one of the most intriguing and otherworldly performances commissioned for Now or Never, even if it is to never surface again. Perhaps viewers can cherish being privy to something fleeting or sacred. A secret ritual of sorts.
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