BAYNK

BAYNK takes another massive leap forward on his terrific sophomore album, SENESCENCE, a record he sees as a spiritual successor to his full-length 2021 debut, ADOLESCENCE. While the latter reveled in the heartbreak and immediacy of youth, the former looks to the future, grappling with themes of loss, love, death, and connection. “SENESCENCE is the other side of the coin, about time and the passing of it and the realisations that physical life is not forever—the acute awareness of one’s own biological vulnerability, and with that, a greater appreciation for the true richness of life.” Such an ambitious and amorphous concept could lend itself to platitudes, BAYNK acknowledges, but his scrupulous songwriting and deeply idiosyncratic production resists clichés. “I’m constantly avoiding trying to sound cliché,” he says. “But the majority of the time a cliché is just how it really is.”

Across 10 songs, SENESCENCE announces itself as a daring, dynamic fusion of pop, deep house, contemporary club, funk, and ambient; it instantly stands out as BAYNK’s most fully realised and sonically sophisticated work to date. “It took a long time for my output to catch up with my taste,” he said. “For a long time I felt like I was listening to as much music as I could and learning about how it was made and its history.” If ADOLESCENCE caught BAYNK attempting “to create the perfect festival lineup” from his youth, SENESCENCE finds him exploring the uncharted parameters of his adult artistry, pulling inspiration from the likes of Caribou and Toro y Moi to capture gnarled moments of anxiety, openhearted longing, and searing vulnerability with expressive textures, tempos, and melodies.