Actress's Radical Frame has eight tracks, and the first two last 12 seconds and 4 seconds. The last one runs 16 minutes and 24 seconds. Darren Cunningham, who records as Actress, released the album on Ninja Tune on 18 September 2026, and its finale, "Sheets" (featuring Rainy Miller), takes up roughly 43% of the running time. Add up the durations on the artist's Bandcamp page and you get about 38 minutes, which makes the closer the record's centre of gravity.

So where does it go? You cannot treat this one as a transition.

What happens inside "Sheets"

Crack, Bandcamp Daily and Clash all describe the same destination for "Sheets": water. The routes differ. Crack, in its profile of Cunningham, has the drums gone to sea sounds and white noise by around the ten-minute mark. Before that, in Crack's account, Rainy Miller repeats "I overthink" through static while a juke-style rhythm builds beneath swelling pads. Bandcamp Daily's April Clare Welsh hears "footwork-style syncopations" thrown against a distorted kick.

Put those descriptions together and you get three phases: a vocal hook, a rhythmic middle, a long dissolve. Cunningham himself calls "Sheets" "probably the centrepiece of the album" in the Crack piece. Clash's Shahzaib Hussain writes that "nothing about this number feels oppressive". Worth remembering when the clock reads 16:24.

Length as an argument

No interview we found has Cunningham explaining why the track runs this long, so treat what follows as our reading, not his stated intent. To us, the duration is the point. A 16-minute piece that changes shape twice does not overstay. It sets its own pace and asks the room to accept it.

That is a provocation for DJs. Plenty of habits are built around the first two minutes of a record and an exit near the four-minute mark. "Sheets" punishes that habit.

Where it could sit in a set

We found no sourced account of any DJ playing "Sheets", so none of this is how anyone actually does it. These are considerations.

  • Closing the night. The obvious slot. The dissolve into waves ends a session well, and nobody has to mix out of it.
  • Mid-set, committed. You are giving up 16 minutes of the floor, so the room needs to be with you.
  • Cut in late. Joining it halfway skips the vocal hook and starts in the rhythm. Whether it holds up that way is a question only a loud room can answer.
  • Leave early. You can, but the closing waves are where the track earns its length.

We have not checked the track's BPM or key, so we are not quoting any. Check it on your own copy before you plan a blend.

Keeping the whole thing

A 16-minute finale is easy to lose if a recording stops early. Ohm records your whole set, so a track like "Sheets" is captured start to finish. Playing the recording back is how you judge whether it earned its slot. Our guide to reviewing your own recordings covers how to do that.

If Actress's Radical Frame has you thinking about patience in music more broadly, our listening guide to Boards of Canada's Tape 05 is another record that rewards slowing down.

Try it once at home, at full length, before you try it in public. The track will tell you how much room it needs.