Starchild & The New Romantic

Starchild, also known as Starchild & the New Romantic, shares no direct tie to the extraterrestrial figure from Parliament’s fourth album yet traces a clear creative lineage through funk-rooted experimentation. The New York-based alternative R&B musician sits nearer to Prince in approach and shares artistic kinship with Blood Orange, Solange, and Sampha, among the many peers he has joined on record. After an initial run with Ghostly International that peaked with the 2018 album Language, the vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer issued his sophomore full-length, Forever, as a self-released project in 2020.

Washington, D.C. native Bryndon Cook first broadened his musical foundation through choral singing and repeated exposure to the city’s Black radio outlet WPGC. He studied saxophone, later added guitar, and at seventeen forwarded early demos to an encouraging Dev Hynes, better known as Blood Orange. Cook introduced the Starchild moniker in 2012 via the digital Night Music EP, then scattered additional tracks across the following years while deepening his partnership with Solange, ultimately serving as her musical director and bandleader. In 2014 he posted the introspective ballad “All My Lovers” online and unveiled its video on The Fader’s platform; before year’s end he placed “Relax” on the Dear White People soundtrack.

Ghostly International gave “All My Lovers” an official release the next year and followed with the first commercial Starchild & the New Romantic EP, Crucial, that March. Cook maintained steady support for fellow artists while shaping fresh solo work. Alongside early champion Patrick Wimberly of Chairlift, he contributed to Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound and to Solange’s chart-topping A Seat at the Table, co-producing “Don’t Touch My Hair” on the latter, and also appeared on Porches’ The House.

Starchild & the New Romantic’s debut album Language reached Ghostly International in February 2018. Sleek and largely brisk, the set drew from early-’80s R&B steeped in funk, spotlighting the title track and “Can I Come Over” as singles while featuring the Newark Boys Chorus on another standout cut. Live at National Sawdust, captured at a Brooklyn performance between Crucial and Language, surfaced the following March. After assisting Blood Orange’s Angel’s Pulse and Kindness’s Something Like a War, Cook returned in November 2019 with the self-issued VHS 1138 EP, enlisting Porches, James Pants, and Toro y Moi. The second Starchild & the New Romantic album, Forever, emerged on Juneteenth 2020 and widened his circle further with Fabiana Palladino, Nick Hakim, and London O’Connor among the participants.