8 October 2026 – Robbie Bennett Announces Two Solo Albums and Lets a Player Piano Take Control of the Synthesizers

Robbie Bennett, best known as the keyboardist in The War on Drugs, has announced two solo albums arriving simultaneously on December 11 through American Dreams. Steloken and Circulation will contain twenty-nine tracks between them, following Bennett's 2020 solo debut Permanent World. Rather than simply recording conventional keyboard pieces, Bennett developed an unusual compositional system involving an acoustic player piano sending MIDI information into an Oberheim OB-X8 synthesizer.

The acoustic and electronic instruments could consequently operate together, creating performances that sit somewhere between human intention and mechanical interpretation within ambient and experimental realms. Further layers incorporate Fender Rhodes, vocoder and the wonderfully strange Soma Terra synthesizer, an instrument equipped with pressure-sensitive wooden controls and a gyroscope. Bennett has shared "Sister" from Steloken and "The Light on Your Face" from Circulation as the first previews.

The announcement offers an intriguing glimpse into the creative life of a musician whose contributions to The War on Drugs often provide much of the atmosphere surrounding Adam Granduciel's songs. Bennett appears to have developed an entire experimental process around the instruments themselves. Two albums released together might seem excessive, but once your piano starts talking to your synthesizer, apparently it becomes difficult to persuade either of them to stop.