If the demise of traditional record making is designed to foster any band’s fruitful existence, it’s that of Teengirl Fantasy. As students at Oberlin who initially garnered nods by releasing homemade remixes online, the duo (Logan Takahashi and Nick Weiss) have recorded a debut full-length that’s a glittery collage of samples and amorphous homemade sounds.
It’s a confusing grab bag — the sort of thing that reeks of dorm-room scrappiness — but a fun and skillful one nonetheless. In essence, Teengirl Fantasy are great at filtering club music through a chillwave Rube Goldberg contraption (or vice versa, maybe), producing layers of psychedelic dream pop atop a medley of R&B, house beats, and pre-fab ’80s tunes.
And they do so in a way that conglomerates an immense variety of predecessors: “In the Rain” calls upon 808 State’s fluttery acid house hit, “Pacific State”; “Dancing in Slow Motion,” featuring the vocals of Light Asylum’s Shannon Funchess, replicates Whitney Houston–heyday R&B/disco ballads. Given the DIY tools that Takahashi and Weiss have at their disposal, they may not give you a lot to sink your teeth into and fill up on, but there’s a lot of tasty, weird stuff on which to graze.
