The rains lash packed streets, as queues into dilapidated billiard rooms rack up along Stoke Newington Road. Much of the city sleeps, although on these outer eastern fringes the night is but young. Destined for an exorbitant form of disappointment for many perhaps, yet there's rejuvenated optimism in the eyes of every. Even blades of sodden hair strewn across the faces to which they may belong fail to dampen the debauched spirit intrinsic to Dalston. Do what we like and we like what we do, let's get a party going. And nowhere is that to be better started than beneath the doors branded 33-35, where we're to go Nocturnal with Ohio beat-pop dweebs Teengirl Fantasy.
If Logan Takahashi be their firecracker then Nick Weiss is the naked flame: volatile, invigorating, and with that endowed with a darn sight more vim in his drum pad-thwacking wrist than an armada of marching Talabots. It's his So Will Be Now which resounds from the depths, rebounding off flimsy plasterboard walls as the archetypal, overzealous door staff get frisk-y with it. Once inside, this as yet unsullied space is, if somewhat ill-suited to shows, utterly ideal for sunless revelry. And Teengirl Fantasy are an exemplary pairing to spur us on into the earliest hours.
Contrary to the modus operandi of many a contemporary, Takahashi and Weiss – despite the apparent slacker aesthetic – swash sweat into their craft. That is to say that for mere programmers, they plug away with an inspiring diligence as they open with Pyjama. Certain elements come pre-readied for convenience's sake more than owt else, yet theirs is a meticulously blended mélange of the readymade and the assiduously reproduced, and one to have discernibly been rehearsed most thoroughly.
Similarly inspiring is Teengirl's estimable subversion from contemporary standard: within the context of effervescent sophomoreTracer, Pyjama features the inimitably ethereal Noah Lennox on aquatic gurgles and moans although as the endangered Panda Bear is of course off elsewhere at the minute, given that they're without their guest vocalist the track itself is therefore recited without vocals. It again demonstrates the pair's versatility; their ability to pluck neat hooks, lines, and sinkers out from the abyss of infinity, and with it their awareness of the significance of show. It's one of their finer, more mellow compositions and therefore they inevitably oughtn't eliminate it from tonight's setlist. Though in switching it up, not only are many of its finely nuanced facets accentuated rather more acutely, but they also eschew the dreary usage of the dreaded backing track. Right on, etc.
But essentially, Teengirl Fantasy mesh together a bespoke, and with that highly idiosyncratic futuro soul-pop designed for times at which any disparity between day and night has all but disintegrated entirely. And never is this more effective than on their instrumental turns: the wild, yet with that reassuring oscillations of glitch and bloop on an ebullient Timeline, and the scuttling rhythmic statics of Vector Spray elucidate this with a remarkably lucid clarity. Their hour – an hour that, as with many a night out, whizzes by in a bit of a blur – pertains to the overall feel of a DJ spin and yet, simultaneously, the ambience keeps extraordinarily intense. Attentions rarely stray, as every skull remains transfixed once converged upon these strobe-illumined, and thereby only momentarily visible figures.
Then there's End. The resplendently squelchy End is, to all extensive purposes, the muggy college beaut to end all dorm-produced Logic formulations. It establishes the wide-eyed fantasists as America(-via-Amsterdam)'s answer to Walls, and proffers an insight into a perhaps altogether halcyon zeitgeist of lolling about for weekends on end in the disreputable filth of the standard '90s frat house. Heftier and trancier than on record, it leaves us well and truly entranced. It drifts a tad out of sync in its closing moments in the only bit to border on the disastrous, yet the set is expertly rescued and with expedition too. It's intriguing, however, to witness such nimble improvisation given how little there is scattered elsewhere throughout the set. Is there perhaps all too little? Perhaps; no, most probably, yes.
Yet the polished scimitar sheen with which an absolutely scintillating Do It gleams numbs any such constructively critical insight. Transmogrified into a real blinder, if End may be the track to scale the apices of our end of year lists then the Romanthony-featuring electro-house belter oughtn't fall far behind. Vocals do this time propel the track and perpetuate the night, as the ever Auto-Tuned Anthony Moore swoons: "I get the feeling in the club tonight/ I can feel it/ And if you feel it you know it's alright/ Let's come together, explode/ It's now or never – ready, set, go", we're one. For Bird On The Wire extended an invitation to a Nocturnal out-and-about neither to make you piss blood nor prefer a night in with Blood Diamonds' piss-poor Soundcloud on an interminable repeat. No mean feat, above all for a night down in Dalston.
