Serpentine textural and bodily modulations of the melodies are the real star of this project from Barcelona based Julia Bondar. She crafts Bonding with elastic drums, fizz, and rust bolted onto modular synth sounds; an uncertain terrain between retro-future and brooding techno hypnosis.
Silky, pungent glides of synth give way to a massive and hopeful lead, the sandpapery bass cranking up to the forefront in dramatic swells. There’s something of Daft Punk’s eighties retrofuturism in the sound design of the leads and the slinky, electroish melodies. But her sounds are supercharged with some visceral, hi-fi sensibility, so that the liquid arcs of synth lines trace across the track like a beam of laser light, or an errant spatter of neon paint on an otherwise earth-tone Jackson Pollock. The arrangement and drum patterning are representative of the crisper, more minimalistic style often favored in hardware-focused live sets, and allow these always-evolving, interloculating lines of electric synth to lock into dark, hypnotic grooves that shed skins like snakes as they move through rough terrain.
An interlude, “Le neige et ses messes noires,” bubbles with flecks of delicately synthesized shimmer that manages to sound more haunted or brooding than fanciful. It serves as a great thematic precursor to the track that follows, which features a freely associated, agitated, and often confusing conversation in French between a man and a woman which is underhandedly confrontational, disguising intense emotion with talk of snowfall and drinking and ninjas.
The rippling synth returns but wearing a different skin, different textures prickling it’s carapace. “Obey” is more subtle and sensual, a track with seductive mystery lurking in an effortless groove. These constant textural and bodily modulations of the sounds are the real star of this project, from the fizz and rust bolted onto the modular synth sounds to the expansive echos and reverb on the drums allowing them to explore the whole of the territory between expected downbeats, she ultimately operates in a similar world as Jon Hopkins, blending surprising and hopeful geysers of sound with elastic drums.
It ends on a surprisingly inquisitive tone, as though one is unsure of the ultimate takeaway, disoriented by one too many transformations and asking the listener to come to their own conclusions.
-Winston Mann
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