Splazsh

Splazsh is one of those albums that plays better as an album than as individual songs, giving it a gestalt quality; it's a painting more than a series of brushstrokes. Where Actress' first album, Hazyville, used much of the same vocabulary—an echo of deteriorated rave and ambient influence—Splazsh is a more perfected evolution of that sound. Starting with the near-nine-minute "Hubble" (a song that should by all rights grow tiresome with a persistent four-to-the-floor), there's never a sense of lost energy in the gentle ebb and flow of the track programming. In fact, perhaps part of why this works so well as a cohesive piece is the fact that Actress never seems to make anything longer (or shorter) than it needs to be. There aren't any intentionally DJ-friendly intros or outros, and some perfectly dance floor–friendly selections like "Senorita" are more like tone poems, clocking in at just a few minutes. Whether by virtue of excellent editing, production, or something more ephemeral and indefinable, Splazsh is an immediate classic; it's an expression carving out its own moment in time.