The Inner Mansions was Teen Daze‘s second album of 2012. If his debut, All Of Us, Together, was a shadowy vision of utopian, futuristic dance, then The Inner Mansions is the Yang to that Yin. It’s undeniably a record that’s bright, pleasant, and beautifully composed, but it’s also like a babbling brook slowly polishing a marble stone, in that washes over you rather than making any significant impact. They say familiarity breeds contempt, but I think that’s a little too harsh. In this instance I’d say familiarity breeds complacence. The Inner Mansions is, with the exception of the incongruous mid way point ‘Union’, an ambient-electronic album. Unfortunately for Teen Daze, that genre is no longer as niche as it once was. The proliferation of music in such an ilk has meant that to create something utterly captivating and unique, it has to be just that, and more. I would love to champion this album as a frontrunner, but in a genre so teeming with talent, I just can’t.
I think much of problem stems from the nature of electronic music itself. It’s true that you can achieve an insurmountable breadth of music with a synthesiser, some computer software and clever sampling, but what you lose in return for that ‘originality’ is the soul that comes from an instrument and a voice. I’m not saying that electronic artists sell themselves to the devil or anything, but it does seem that electronic music, especially the ‘ambient’ variety, can often sound a bit flat. Even if it has lyrics, and melody, like The Inner Mansions does at times, there’s just that niggling feeling that you’ve heard it all before.
It doesn’t help that the electronic scene seems to be a particularly ephemeral one. Genres and cliques come and go with astonishing rapidity, but whilst in the midst of one, the turnout is feverish, and quickly loses its impact. The chillwave, lo-fi, ambient scene has continued longer than most, but it’s still a niche with an expiration date, and perhaps that time is almost upon us. A few months ago I raved about Four Tet, with superlatives flowing from all areas of the page, and yet here I am, listening to Teen Daze at the start of a new year, criticising what is broadly speaking, a similar album. I suppose everything has stayed the same, but everything has changed.
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By Alex Throssell
Dance Yrself Clean
