BAYNK, London

Baynk biography

Pushing beyond his playlist origins, the New Zealand producer’s debut album revels in eccentric details while adhering to traditional pop structures. Like so many electronic artists in the mid-’10s, New Zealand’s BAYNK (Jock Nowell-Usticke) got his start making chill, pop-adjacent songs that seemed primed for placement in mood-based playlists. His early attempts at surf-bro EDM sounded like what Kygo and LeMarquis were putting out on SoundCloud at the time; he used his voice sparingly, mainly as material to be sampled. In the years since, though, he has refined his palette. On 2017’s Someone’s EP I and 2019’s Someone’s EP II, his percussion took on the rhythmic impulse of Four Tet, and his rubbery basslines and glossy experimentalism were reminiscent of early Cashmere Cat and Flume. Using his Auto-Tuned falsetto to further texturize his songs, BAYNK’s fusion of house, R&B, and pop soon set him apart from the many similar acts scattered throughout the scene. The album is nominally a concept record about the immediacy of youth and romantic first experiences. “I went through this period of not being able to write anything,” BAYNK told Apple Music. Being in a “stable and happy relationship” wasn’t conducive to inspiration, so to get around his writer’s block, he returned to the creative cocoon of “first love.” Lyrically, the album is imagistic and vague, depicting half-baked scenes of lying in the sun, holding hands in a car, and walking through fields. The narrative never coalesces into anything meaningful, and its emotional pull wanes quickly. First love invigorates but rarely sustains; it’s BAYNK’s elastic and original production that propels the album forward, the pulse of the beat begging us to feel something beyond recognition.

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