Hometown: Harlem.
The lineup: Bryndon Cook (vocals, music).
The background: As though by magic … Of course there’s no substitute for the real thing, but Bryndon Cook, AKA Starchild & The New Romantic, does a fair approximation of 1980s Prince at his most synthy and slow. The 23-year-old New Yorker sings of “rapture” on the opening track to his debut EP, Crucial, but this is exaltation with a side order of sad. It’s almost as though Cook could see what was coming. Listening to the eight tracks on Crucial is like hearing an extended tribute to the purple deity. He even took the title of the EP from a bootleg of studio out-takes apocryphally credited to Prince and Miles Davis.
It’s not all Prince worship. Cook grew up loving everyone from Sade to George Clinton. Starchild is partially attributed to a name from P-Funk mythology – something about an alien who arrives by spacecraft to bring the Holy Funk – and nods to Cook’s upbringing in a house across the street from the Nasa Headquarters in Greenbelt. Coming from the state of Maryland also meant exposure to go-go, jazz and gospel (“My roots,” says Cook), though he spent four formative years in Atlanta, home of black futurism (not to mention Future). He continued to look far and wide for other influences: his first mixtape was called Rad! and featured him rapping over David Axelrod and Washed Out. In the last couple of years, he has worked with Solange, Kindness, and Chairlift as touring guitarist, and has collaborated with Dev Hynes.
But Prince is his primary influence, and he freely admits it. “I look at him as a whole genre,” he says. “Within the genre of Prince, there is so much to discover.” Like his idol, Starchild played and recorded every note of Crucial on his own, on his laptop. He gives the music a wooziness, like soul with a chillwave gauze (Cook was once an intern at Pitchfork), and keeps it mainly – as we said – nice and slow. There’s a good reason for this: he calls what he does Champion Music for the Heartbroken, describing his songs as “diary entries from the end of my teenage years, where I’m trying to reconcile heartbreak and rejection with escapism”. He adds: “I always appreciated music that lent a helping hand and said, ‘Hey, are you with me? Because I am with you.’ I hope I can do that for someone, somewhere. If I’m lucky.”
All My Lovers is like Purple Rain on downers, although as with most soundalikes, the closer you inspect it, the less it sounds like the artist it’s paying homage to, and the more it assumes an identity of its own. Still, this is definitely Prince-like, if not Prince-lite. Slammin’ Mannequin is the one fast song, moving at I Would Die 4 U pace. It sounds as though Cook went out and bought a Linn drum and some of the other equipment Prince used to record his early-’80s output, especially Purple Rain. Listen out for the fiery, fierce guitar solo at the end. Love Interlude features waves of synth while Cook uses his falsetto to impressive effect. Woman’s Dress finds Starchild in self-doubting mood (“Will I ever be enough for you?”), while New Romantic is an object lesson in how to construct the perfect 80s slow jam, all shimmery synths and rubbery bassline. The title track ends the EP as it began, with Starchild lost in a synth murk. It’s as though Cook anticipated the tragic events of 21 April , 2016 before he made this glorious, stately yet sorrowful “computer blue” music. It’s one way to remember Prince.
The truth: Baby, he’s a star(child).
Most likely to: Die 4 U.
Least likely to: Go crazy.
What to buy: The Crucial EP is out now on Ghostly International.
File next to: Prince, Dev Hynes, Frank Ocean, Shamir.
Links: facebook.com/thisisstarchild.
Ones to watch: Globelamp, Kllo, Demotaped, Colour, Charlotte Day Wilson.
