Static

A terrifying energy charges the atmosphere just before a storm breaks out. The light looks wrong, shadows washed out by the flat, sickly greenish hue of the sky. You can feel the air thin as the barometric pressure drops, preparing for the coming gusts of wind and sharp torrents of rain or hail. These moments seem to last forever, extending the time until the storm finally arrives, offering a respite from the tension.

That jittery, clenched-jaw feeling saturates charmers Static, Darren Cunningham's final album as an actor. It's a soft and unsettling record, quietly spewing its paranoid aura like a piece of decaying fruit in a well-stocked kitchen. Even the album's prettiest passages—and there are many—move with an uneasy bevel, as if Cunningham composed these pieces hunched over, eyes darting, shoulders brushing his ears. The majority of Static it came from an uninterrupted period of productivity that Cunningham describes as an “extended flow state,” and that deep focus gives it a coherence that some of his previous records lacked. Each song seems to emerge from the previous one, like a coral reef blooming in a strange and unique world.

Cunningham hides most of his sounds under a blanket of hiss, smearing everything in a murky haze. He'll often use sidechain compression to carve out kick drums, giving them the effect of strobe signals on a foggy night. There is a pervasive dreamlike atmosphere, as if each instrument is being played in a different space, all traveling considerable distances to reach your ears. The opening atmospheric moments of “System Verse” shimmer like light pollution on the horizon, noisy synth surfaces floating around a murky bass beat. As the song fades out, it feels like it's slowly—almost menacingly—approaching, merging into a hushed yet propulsive 140 BPM techno track. It can be difficult to work out exactly what is happening at any given moment Staticeven if the elements are generally familiar.

A disorienting amount of stress yields very little resolution. The synth sequences on “Ray” overlap but never seem to touch each other, their circular juxtaposition beginning with the insistent click of the 16th-note hi-hats. “Cafe del Mars” features a delirious cascade of arpeggios punctuated by a synth string, building anticipation for a chord change that never comes. When Cunningham offers a break from the pressure, he tends to bury it deep in the mix. The soft flanging guitar melody on “Dolphin Spray” softens the song's staccato edge, but you have to strain to pull it off. Any moments of peace are fleeting, in constant danger of being overshadowed by the looming terror.