Like lost transmissions from an alternate reality early-90s — one where where rave, trance, and jock jams club hits collided to pave the way for a populist bedroom dance music explosion — Teengirl Fantasy craft warm, bleary beats that manage to simultaneously channel both Technotronic and Videohippos. It's maximalist dance party music that never devolves into anesthetic slickness, or overdriven summer ghettoblaster nostalgia with smoother sweeps of melody gracefully feathered in around it.
For their first 12″ single, the duo has taken full advantage of an actual Brooklyn recording studio (Jeremy Scott's the Civil Defense, which has also seen the likes of These Are Powers, the Vivian Girls, Meneguar, and Pterodactyl), allowing studio-recorded vocal and synthesizer parts to join their usual cavalcade of sampled bits and pieces. Perhaps as a result, the new tracks share intimations of a cleaner, more spacious sound, each crisply outlined in drum machines and pads, then suffused in fuzzy melancholy. It's music shaking off regrets and stepping out into the day, for letting gentle sunlight gradually ease open eyelids clenched against the morning.
The 12″ will be out on BJ Rubin's Dick Move label this September (Rubin also acted as producer in a marathon recording session just this last weekend), and will be available only in an edition of 100 at the record's release party in Amsterdam, where the band will be spending the fall. But suppress that groan of despair: the whole thing is already available for download on Pukekos. Now just see about getting in touch with your Dutch friends so they can get you the vinyl version.
Here, just to whet your appetite, is a remix of the A-side from Baltimore video artist Mark Brown, who has run Teengirl's concert visuals during several recent shows. Brown has managed to both ramp up the tempo into jittery caffeine visions (and, true to the name, kick the rhythms into a fitting early-jungle workout), while smearing out the melodies into impressionistic glaze.
Teengirl Fantasy, “Hollywood Hils” (Mark Brown's Hollywood Chills Jungle Dub)
Still on the move, Teengirl Fantasy will be playing with Lightning Bolt in Providence this Thursday, and back in New York for the Rooftop Films Animation Block Party on Friday. Dick Move's BJ Rubin has also curated a Showpaper benefit at Monster Island tonight (Wednesday).
Remember, the full record is downloadable right here.
