Everywhere he is, Darren Cunningham hears music. The London producer behind Actress as well as the engaging Werkdiscs imprint frequently takes inspiration for his outré-leaning dance music from the world around him—2012's profile-raising R.I.P. drew from Cunningham's fascination with nature, with track names like "Tree of Knowledge" and "Jardin" (Spanish for "garden"). His voraciousness for drawing from the sounds of everyday life bleeds into our recent Skype conversation, when an ambulance siren blares down the street on my side of the call. "That sounds so cool," Cunningham abruptly exclaims, interrupting himself mid-sentence to ask me what it was. "I might have to record that."

The press materials for his fourth album as Actress, Ghettoville (out January 28) hint that the record marks the end of the project, but Cunningham claims differently, citing contractual obligations and philosophical notions in the same breath. "Actress is a character," he says, "and there’s an overall image that the character is there to portray, to keep me interested and help me visualize how the music is going to evolve." After R.I.P. and 2010's groundbreaking Splazsh were released on Damon Albarn's Honest Jon's label, Ghettoville is his first LP for UK electronic institution Ninja Tune, who also distribute Werkdiscs releases.

The new album is different from anything else Cunningham has done; more so than the abstract R.I.P., Ghettoville largely jettisons beat-oriented fare for low-slung drones, brittle soundscapes, and most surprisingly, pitch-dropped R&B textures. "When I came to London, I lived in Brixton for 13 years, and I’ve seen crack addicts and deals being made on the corners," Cunningham says, talking about the album's necessary roughness. "I’ve seen psychologically deranged people acting up and behaving in crazy ways. I wanted this record to sound brittle, as if you were an addict and you feel like the world is crumbling around you."

Actress' music has always thrived on intangible sounds, but Ghettoville is especially not the type of stuff that's designed to set a dance floor ablaze—at a recent Brooklyn performance, the endlessly clicking "Rims" practically stopped audience members in their tracks, causing a bystander to tug on my collar and say, "I thought this was supposed to be dance music!" I mention this to Cunningham near the end of our interview, and his response is brusque: "I don't worry about those things. I don't see why I should, really."

Pitchfork: You've mentioned in previous interviews that financial issues have affected your ability to create in the past. Is that less of a problem these days?

Darren Cunningham: When I committed to making music full-time, I made a vow that you have to suffer for your art. It’s always a struggle, because from album to album I always challenge myself to find new ways to push the envelope—not just in regards to my music, but also myself. I finished writing Ghettoville six months ago, and today I completely broke down the studio. I decided to get rid of equipment, reconfigure the entire set-up, and go through my computer and trash everything. I have a habit of purging stuff. It’s like tearing off a new layer, laying out a physical canvas to start the next phase of what it is that I’m trying to do as an artist. I try to unlearn certain things to move in a different direction.

But even though the conditions that I write within have changed, my rituals are the same. I’ve got a dog that I walk first thing in the morning, and I spend a lot of time walking around my neighborhood at night, trying to get the ambience and feel. I walk in the rain, when it’s hot, when it’s cold. What has changed is I’ve come into contact with more people and I’ve been in lots of interesting scenarios, so the darkness of human nature crept into Ghettoville.

Ghettoville cover:

Pitchfork: I've noticed that your album covers have always featured sharp, angled shapes.

DC: My vision's defined the shapes that I see, and sometimes they're extremely abstract. I'm into geometry, outlines, smudging, cubism, abstract expressionism, color fields. I approach what I do from a visual perspective, rather than a musical perspective. It's like I'm trying to paint something, but the palette is sonic. I'm not necessarily creating bass lines—it's more about perception than it is about what is actually being done.

Actress: "Grey Over Blue" (via SoundCloud)

Pitchfork: As a listener, what were your first interactions with dance music?

DC: Back in the Midlands, the nightclubs tended to play a lot of American deep house—Tony Humphries, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk. And then going to festivals was when I was first introduced to Detroit techno. I saw Kraftwerk and Daft Punk live. The UK influence was much more on the drum-and-bass side of things, but around that time I was on the road to discovery. From that point onwards it was just about how a piece of music was made—it wasn't really about dancing. I love partying, but if I'm going to go dancing, I'm more likely to go to a house party. The fascination of how a piece of music was put together sent me on the path to wanting to learn how to do it.