Bendu - Lautner

 Released: April 25

Filled with retro-inspired synths and summer-y beats, Lautner is a fun little upbeat album. Bendu always has a penchant for those synthwave adjacent sounds and on this one he wraps them up into a rather nice package full of tracks that really sound downright happy throughout much of the runtime. Some of the standout summer time tracks, at least in my opinion, are “Chemosphere,” “Silvertop,” and “Mauer.” All three sound rather upbeat and light but “Chemosphere” really has the greatest vibe in my opinion. It’s got some bright little little chops that help keep a rhythm with the drums, which on their own are fantastically layered but avoid becoming overly complex. And the layering is top notch on the snare as it stays failrly low-key through the track and getting a heavier layer at certain points for incredible emphasis. “Silvertop” feels a bit thinner overall but it still has that upbeat summertime drive vibe to it in the beat and the synth lines are just pure joy as well. 

Even with these upbeat melodies, there’s plenty of moment where the album goes back into those ambient and downtempo moods that Bendu is known for. “Eisele” is one of these less common moments where things slow way down and set aside the prominent beats in favor of gently warped synths and spacey vocal snippets. It’s simple yet effective its its composition with little more than a couple of synths as it brings on that floating sensation. The final track of the album takes a likewise approach although it leans much more in the direction of atmospheric weirdness at the outset. Odd ambient noises fill up the soundscape, making one think that we’re about to get some lightly abstract soundscapes throughout. Until the main arpeggiated synth picks up into the scene and takes us into a synthwave-adjacent adventure that slowly rises and falls over the course of the next several minutes. It’s a rather interesting subversion, but one that transforms the track into something rather epic.