Send "Teen Daze " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 A year on from the summer of chillwave, and we've nailed down what makes this stripe of music "beachy": smeary synths, a danceable pace, hints of memory-dulled nostalgia, invitingly vague lyrics about vaguer feelings, stuff about being a young, stuff about weed. It's not a formula, per se, but in some hands it occasionally feels like one. Bedroom producer Teen Daze has been floating tracks onto the internet for the last year and change, matching up squiggly keyboard lines to mild thumps and all the requisite haze. He's got a track called "Shine on You Crazy White Cap" and another called "Gone for the Summer". There's a band Tumblr with a picture of a lake as its background. They are called Teen Daze. But unlike a lot of these bedroom blurmongers, Teen Daze seems in total control; his synths bleed into more brilliant colors, his languid pace more purposeful, his memory bank FDIC-insured, his vagueness earned by the quality of his output.Daze's debut EP, Four More Years, whirls right into its title track, its big spluttery drums and many moving parts not far from Ernest Greene's work as Washed Out-- until a giant synth, part ELP, part Black Moth Super Rainbow, splits the song open down the middle. It feels brash, towering over the relatively lax backing track, but with so much so-called chillwave finds a gentle groove and sticks with it, but throughout Four More Years, Teen Daze find ways to slip these daringly germane little asides into the tunes, rescuing them from complacency. In the twinkly "Gone For the Summer", it's an electric piano line underpinning the tracks' inherent wooziness; in "Around", it's an unusually kinetic bit of synth programming that Delorean oughta consider stealing; in "Saviour", it's a somewhat ill-fitting vocal sample that repeats throughout the track, creating its own odd logic. Four More Years gleans its color from these bold choices, and Daze's tone palette appears about as rich as anybody's working in the genre....full text |
| Thismusicwins |
| Teen Daze has taken the internet by storm since he started posting music up on his Tumblr in late April of this year. According to this really interesting interview from Beyond Robson, the project had been going little more than a few weeks before Pitchfork caught wind, and since then he’s gone on to be featured more than five times on the music blog’s esteemed pages. Tracks such as “Shine On You Crazy White Cap” and “Gone For The Summer (Part Two)” circulated across the online music media world in a matter of days following the emergence of this (whatever you want to call it) shoegazing, lo-fi, electronica artist. Ten weeks on, and the Vancouver ambient dance project is seeing its first release via Arcade Sound (digital July 27th, physical August 12th) and on cassette via Wonder Beard Tapes, in what may well prove to be an inadequate print of just 100 copies. The EP, entitled “Four More Years”, was kindly sent over in June by Arcade Sound – and has been enjoyed over at my end ever since. Its hazy glo-fi groove is very fashionable indeed (if its safe to talk of music in that way), drawing shamelessly and consistently from some of last year’s more memorable sounds, Washed Out and Neon Indian to name but a few. However the influence is most certainly not one-dimensional; musical influences are beneficial so long as something new is brought to the table – and what Teen Daze brings to the table is new emphasis on the chill. The beats behind are no wash-out, but the flesh on the percussive skeleton is awash with more distance than ever before. Any (perhaps) Toro y Moi inspired temptation to drop a hint of Michael Jackson into the mix are resisted by the Vancouver producer, who places his musical emphasis far more on the overall feel and effect than on individual melodies. Saying that however, there is definitely a euphoric French-house drive which is known to take over with little warning. Opening track “Four More Years” displays a touch of Baths’ glitch-hop and a street dance attitude which continues into track four, “Around”....full text |
| Thelineofbestfit |
| It was just back in April that the bedroom producer known as Teen Daze posted his first track online, and within days Pitchfork and its legion of imitation blogs were wetting themselves with giddy excitement. The rapid proliferation of Teen Daze’s music is a perfect example of the new blog driven music culture where being first is the most important thing, almost to the extent where the genesis of anticipation around this release is hardly unusual. It becomes a struggle to decipher whether this is as a result of the musics innate quality or because of its relation with the current vogue niche. Thankfully Teen Daze falls neatly enough between those two camps for me to abandon such cynicism for the remainder of this review. In a recent interview Teen Daze stated that part of the motivation in recording these tracks was discovering a new style of music purveyed by the likes of Washed Out and Toro Y Moi, and it does fit neatly within that bracket. It certainly has a similar surface feel but the haze doesn’t run quite as deep here, with the tracks being built around crisp drum beats and elastic bass lines rather than translucent washes of synth. Musically speaking the appeal of Teen Daze is a rather complex thing to articulate, given it’s so heavily reliant on vibes rather than particular aspects of the music. After listening to Four More Years it’s less likely that you’ll remember any specific track or hook as much as you will the atmosphere; the warm nostalgic feeling it invokes is undeniable. Similar to the feeling I have whilst listening to Boards of Canada, most specifically the hiss laden tracks of the elusive Old Tunes cassettes, there’s an irresistible warmth of emotion coursing through the electronics. It’s something best exemplified with ‘Shine On, You Crazy White Cap’, the lyrics “let’s drive to the coastline tonight” conjuring up images of long drives with young, beautiful friends on sun drenched evenings. It’s brimming with a lust for life, and this comes through on practically every track. The opener and title track is awash with glimmering keys and syncopated beats which set the tone perfectly, whilst the driving rhythm and gauzy harmonies of Neon flickers with an incandescent lightness that exudes youthful exuberance....full text |
Teen Daze lyrics
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