Musical Rooms Part 89: Teengirl Fantasy

“As of late we are always on the move, so we don’t really have one specific room where we play music. Any floor, basement, attic, etc. where we can set up our equipment will work. This is a picture of the most recent room we’ve been playing in, which is also our living room in our new apartment in Amsterdam. We have such a beautiful view of Amsterdam’s Centraal Station right outside of our bay window. So lucky! It’s fun to watch all of the people going down the bike path in between songs.

Our set-up (SP-404, Electribe mk2, MPC1000, MicroKorg, and Juno 6 and this amazing Echolution delay pedal that Nick just picked up), is fairly portable and allows us to set up pretty much anywhere. We don’t have any real amps so in the past we’ve monitored our mix using anything from headphones to blown out battery powered baby practice amps. Right now we are using the television speakers, which works pretty well. Maybe when we are older and have the stability and ability to use a real studio space we will, but this set-up works just fine for us now.

When we are writing songs each of us brings our own ideas (a loop, collection of samples, or drum pattern) that we’ve been working on individually, which we then jam on with the each other and add even more ideas to (layers, structures, forms). Often we’ll write songs in short spurts then develop them more by playing them out live at shows. Thus most of our writing process usually occurs live, but there have been times when we are recording an already performed song where we we will get another idea for a part, which will in turn effect how we play the song live again. Other times we will improvise and jam for hours from scratch and may or may not use any of it. After a long time of playing all of the bass and midrange sounds make us fall asleep and we end up forgetting songs if we never hit record.”

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Teengirl Fantasy is Logan Takahashi and Nick Weiss, two friends at Oberlin College in Ohio (although they are currently enjoying a semester abroad in Amsterdam). It’s tough to classify their music within one genre -both Harmonia and Cece Peniston serve as equal reference points. Their love of drone, 4/4, and warm gating synths force new classifications of electronic music. Since forming less than a year ago, they have toured the US coasts opening for acts such as Dan Deacon, Telepathe and THE GZA. Their debut release was the ‘Portofino’ 7″ on Merok Records and on September 5th they released a limited edition 12″ of 113 copies (each with unique artwork) on Dick Move Records. Their debut album is forthcoming on True Panther Sounds. They play The Thomas House, Dublin on Saturday, September 26th. Doors are 8pm and admission is €10. Support is from Angkorwat. For more information, visit www.myspace.com/teengirlfantasy.

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