Workshop
R&b Concrete with Actress
12 Jul 2023 – 17 Jul 2023
Regular hours
- Wed, 12 Jul
- 09:00 – 23:30
- Thu, 13 Jul
- 09:00 – 23:30
- Fri, 14 Jul
- 09:00 – 23:30
- Sat, 15 Jul
- 09:00 – 23:30
- Sun, 16 Jul
- 09:00 – 23:30
Cost of entry
The workshop costs €1389, inclusive of accommodation, excellent food and drinks (all diets catered for), transport from Toulouse and all activities. Grants, bursaries and discounts are available, see www.campfr.com/funding
Address
- Le village
- Aulus-les-Bains
Occitanie - 09140
- France
Travel Information
- Bus from Toulouse, or Saint Girons
- Nearest station: Toulouse. Then bus.
A five-day residential workshop in the epic French Pyrenees, led by Actress.
About
Darren Cunningham (aka Actress) seems to have lived many lifetimes within a single lifetime - he grew up in pro football, transferring his interests to music after suffering an injury. He launched Werkdiscs in 2004, initially as a club night, and then as the label responsible for releasing some of the most forward-thinking club electronics of the last 15 years. Werkdiscs brought us seminal releases from Starkey, Lukid, Zomby, Lone, Moire, Helena Hauff and Actress himself. His debut album 'Hazyville' came out on the label, followed by 'Splazsh' (2010, Honest Jon's) - the former pricked the ears of pretty much the whole music industry, from clubland to modernist militants; the latter solidified Darren's place as a true innovator. 'Splazsh' topped Wire Magazine's 2010 Rewind list and the end-of-year lists of Fact Mag, RA, Pitchfork and others.
Darren's subsequent releases - 'R.I.P', 'Ghettoville', 'AZD', 'LAGEOS', '88', and most recently 'Karma & Desire' - have charted the evolution of a truly exploratory musician, moving without formal constraints or functional boundaries; every new work has been celebrated by his ever-growing army of fans and the media alike. Outside the studio, his work has extended to multimedia interpretations of Steve Reich works, live collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra (the recordings became 'LAGEOS'), performance tributes to Stockhausen, live soundtracks for a 2012 Tate exhibition of work by Yayoi Kusama, and multimedia collaborations with Eddie Peake and Nic Hamilton ('A Shared Cultural Memory', 2013), and Actual Arts collective ('Grey Interiors', 2021).
These five days will encompass an exploration of Actress' unique work in progress, and an insight into the foundations and building blocks of his practice, which is defined as "R&B Concrete". We'll expand over topics such as where/how to start your process, and how to derive sonic colour from non-specific sounds; we'll explore Young Paint, the AI with which Darren collaborates, and we'll directly examine elements of his upcoming album to illustrate all these concepts and more.
