Teen Daze

For his first full-length release, Vancouver’s Teen Daze summoned a collective spirit, inspired by the sparkly-eyed visions of idealistic unity, or as he tells it: “I came upon an old book at a thrift store called Utopian Visions, an encyclopedic volume of different views on what utopia might look like, which became a huge inspiration. Especially when considering the future of our world as it actually unfolds. We’re becoming more and more self-reliant, more and more separated from our communities. I wanted to make a record that sounded more synthetic but also inviting—this is futuristic music with a heart.” I guess even something as gnarly as a “Brooklyn Sunburn” can recall a blissful (blistered?) time of creative inspiration. Look out for All Of Us, Together, out May 22nd on Lefse. - The FADER

Hometown: Vancouver.

The lineup: Jamison (vocals, music).

The background: Do you suffer from that annoying and expensive syndrome where, if you discover an artist you like, you're compelled to investigate, and then buy, everything they've ever done? It happened to us in the 90s after we heard Clouds Taste Metallic by the Flaming Lips, in the 00s with Radio Dept's Pet Grief, and again last year when we found out about Odd Future. It also happened more recently when we chanced upon StewRat, although luckily his albums were available for free download (as were, of course, OF's until Tyler, the Creator put out Goblin earlier this year).

In the case of Teen Daze, there's quite a lot for pathological collector types like us to acquire, but in this instance you have to pay. But like Jennifer Aniston and her lustrous-haired friends, they're worth it. Or rather, he's worth it: Teen Daze is the name used by Jamison, and Jamison is the first name of the twentysomething from British Columbia who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time in his bedroom, recording singles, EPs and albums, several of which are available for purchase from his bandcamp. There are two full-length albums, several EPs and some excellent remixes. Scout around and you may also learn that he collaborated with New Band of the Day favourite MillionYoung last year on a cover of Pink Floyd's Us & Them, and that he issued a free EP reinterpreting songs by those other NBOTD faves Baths. And in his spare time, the lazy bugger has an ambient/folk/post-rock side project called Two Bicycles, which has its own bandcamp.

Jamison – who operates in that nebulous area between dream-pop, ambient, shoegaze and chillwave – uses various aliases to pursue different areas of music: the My Bedroom Floor album, for example, is more dancey, although it's not exactly Jack Your Body, while the Tour EP is downtempo and meditative. But it's all good. And his new stuff's his best yet, which is always nice. Call us old-fashioned, but we prefer it when a musician improves. Teen Daze – and what a great name that is, cleverly connoting a sense of yearning and some of the shimmering haziness of his sound – has just made a six-track EP, A Silent Planet, that takes glo-fi melancholia to new levels.

We won't do a track-by-track this time because it'll just be an embarrassing gush of superlatives and synonyms for opalescent gorgeousness; suffice to say this is music that can be best described using terms normally found in a GCSE physics text book. And that these are clearly the aftershocks felt by a person too shattered to fully express themselves. Put it this way: there is no bellowing here, just yearning. Oh, and we'd just like to say we really appreciate the way Jamison's voice is transfigured throughout, because what is the human voice but raw material to be reshaped into something superior and, well, inhuman-sounding. We accept this goes against 40 years of argument that singing should be untampered-with and unadorned, but there you go, it's Friday, and we're in charge of this little corner of the universe. Or at least we are until our editor tells us to behave.

The buzz: "It would take a hard heart not to be seduced by its superficial beauty" – wordpress.com.

The truth: Superficial beauty? What other kind is there?

Most likely to: Conjure up the aurora borealis.

Least likely to: Advertise L'Oreal.

What to buy: A Silent Planet EP is out now on Waaga.

File next to: MillionYoung, Baths, Washed Out, Cocteau Twins. - The Guardian

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, 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.
For as much slack memoryfuzz as he conjures, Teen Daze has an eye on the dancefloor, and quite a few of these tracks sound a bit like Erasure numbers left to melt in the sun. Teen Daze 's dance tracks are solid enough, if a bit interchangeable on their own; his tempos tend to knock similarly, with only the terse "Around" approaching something a sober person might move to. Still, this kinetic backbone proves a fine backdrop for Teen Daze 's immersive sonic explorations, and his dance tracks are every bit as intricately layered and inventively odd as the stuff at more patient tempos. Vocally, there's not a ton to grab hold of-- Teen Daze sings like the Tough Alliance guys but tends to bury his voice under a pile of synths. His hooks tend to be instrumental, not vocal. And there's a certain sameyness to the tempos here that wears a bit even in the record's half-hour runtime. But this is chillwave, and Teen Daze's version of same holds up to more scrutiny than most. In piling on the layers, sidestepping the narcotic lethargy that and making sure to keep things in motion, Teen Daze is making last summer seem like more than just a memory. - Pitchfork

Not too much information out there on Teen Daze, except that the project is based out of Vancouver (and, like so many people lately, they've started a Tumblr). "Shine On, You Crazy White Cap" is an especially hazy tune that recalls some of last summer's popular sounds-- and its accompanying video, put together by ZJ Wong, is equally as hypnotic. - Pitchfork

Down from the heavens (of Vancouver), with coastline on the mind, Teen Daze arrived bearing euphoria this week... “Shine On, You Crazy White Cap” feels like an an instant summon for summer.” - Stadium and Shrines

It’s a jaunty tune…reminds me a lot of Toro y Moi’s song ‘Freak Love’. The groups name describes the track best. It certainly is dazy…it’s drenched in synth bliss and it flows just like The Farmington. ‘Let’s drive to the coastline, tonight’ - that line pretty much sums up how I feel about my life right now. I just want to get in a car, drive to Cali, and never come back. Oh and I never want to grow up…just four more years plzzzz. Don’t sleep on this!” - Oxygen Ashtray

Last year we had bands like Wavves, Best Coast, and Atlas Sound own our summer soundtrack. For 2010, we’re thinking Vancouver’s Teen Daze will be one of those summer staples. - b!Pop Ventures