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Quick Hit: Teen Daze

Last updated on January 28, 2015

aworldaway

I’ve loved Teen Daze for a while now, because I have a deep and abiding affection for chillwave. Chillwave as a genre has splintered, with adherents linking up with genres they more fit with as their sounds mutate.

Teen Daze stayed firmly with the chillwave thing until A World Away, where he goes full electro on us. The six songs of A World Away draw heavily on arpeggiators, rhythmic patterns, reverb-heavy ’80s synth sounds, and clean lines to get the job done: the results are long tunes that place their lot with subtle change in repetitious themes. Opener “Sunburst” pairs some slow-moving chillwave bass against a neatly organized arpeggiator for a best-of-both-worlds mix; closer “I Feel God in the Water” drops the aggressive pulse and returns to the gently moving warm vibes that characterizes the earliest of chillwave tunes.

But in between, tracks like “Another Night” and “Than” smack listeners in the face with aggressive beats from the first second, assimilating them into a clubby mentality immediately; both tunes adjust and change over their 6 and nearly-9-minute runtimes, but the change in modus operandi is clear here. There’s still chillwave influences throughout, but Teen Daze is striking out in another direction on this release. Future work will let us know if this is the final form, or if the sound will keep changing.