With 80’s style gated snares, pulsing pop synthesisers, and Fendrich’s vocals cooing over the top of a highly compressed mix, ‘Light It Up’ drifts between verse and chorus.
Originating from Vienna, Austria, HUNGER are Daniel Rumpel, Johannes Herbst, and Lucas Fendrich. After having released their debut EP ‘Amused’ in 2017, their latest single arrives with news of a new album, ‘Mosaik’, on the way later this year.
Describing their music as ‘dark and cinematic’, some of those features do translate on their previous material. ‘Cinematic’, in particular, is the appropriate adjective as the trio has had their music featured on the contentious Netflix original series 13 Reasons Why, as well as having another track featured on a Mitsubishi commercial. However, whilst ‘dark’ may have been true of some of their previous catalogue, the release of their latest single sees HUNGER take on a lighter, poppier sound.
Opening briefly with an arpeggiated synth bass, ‘Light It Up’ launches into its first verse, providing relatively similar sounds to what we’ve heard from the Austrians before. With 80’s style gated snares, pulsing pop synthesisers, and Fendrich’s vocals cooing over the top of a highly compressed mix, ‘Light It Up’ drifts between verse and chorus. The track takes a turn towards the middle eight, stripping back some instruments to introduce harmonising vocal melodies. By the close, HUNGER leave what sounds like some form of easter egg for the listener. Uttering the phrase ‘one more time’ through a vocoder, the trio mirror, to almost identical results, the opening of Daft Punk’s 2001 anthem ‘One More Time’.
‘Light It Up’ is lighter and more pop than its predecessors and maybe a foretoken of a sound change going into their upcoming ‘Mosaik’. You can listen to ‘Light It Up’ below.
