Music that is focused on reliving the past and that zooms through phases of retro mania can be painstaking to a stage where creativity and looseness comes to a halt. People wanting to bring a rebirth to Beach Boys surf-rock, or early-90s grunge, and the likes could also frustrate diehard listeners, signifying that the past could never be reborn and should only be something to look back on. So, what Vancouver electronic musician, Teen Daze, does to compromise the two; he extracts bits and bobs from aged dance music and fuses it with his own classy form of ambient tech-house.
All Of Us, Together is hugely atypical in its structure, though not wholly awe-inspiring and unscathed by any error. Inspired by his readings on different utopias, Teen Daze aesthetically builds a nine-track debut, clustered with happy-go-lucky electronics, fused with cut vocal samples and an array of bubbly textures. Though it commences with the mediocre “Treten”, which comprises of a banal tone of chill-wave and a repetitive high-pitch synth-lead, it's suggestive that the Canadian musician began small and finished big. The next track, “Late” is not a soft transition, but it does make the former track quite translucent. With bubbly leads and a smooth texture of ambient-techno, Teen Daze provides intermittent climaxes within the piece; creating tension with increased percussions and heavily amplified reverb.
“The New Balearic” is quite similar, though appearing to contain stronger hi-fi, which omits all necessary smoothness to deliver the penetrating echoes and a thumping bass drum. It is, by no means, overly produced and complexly driven by an immensity of drum-kits, special effects and keys. In actual fact, the whole LP is loaded with endless similarities so evidently that you would think you would have listened to each track, song-by-song, over and over again. Teen Daze appears exuberant, holding a decent consistency throughout.
Brushing away from the usual bubble-pads, “Brooklyn Sunburn” features an array of cut vocal samples, lead by a six-note synth lead. Holding onto the same feel of the album, except with more of a strut, it’s a contrasting piece that is heftily diverse. Though blissful and heavenly, as he plans it to be, the Vancouver musician would need something more eclectically ranged in the next project, as anything more like this could lead to a sense of self-plagiarism. His attempt at a The Field arpeggio in “Erbstück” proves that the youthful musician is able to diversify and adapt to new styles, meaning he has got more bits and bobs to extract in order to create that epic sophomore.
