- Anyone who has seen Delroy Edwards play should know his tastes extend beyond the raw, ghettotech-inspired house he makes for L.I.E.S. and his own label, LA Club Resource. His mini-LP for Boomkat's eclectic Death Of Rave imprint sounds like one of his L.I.E.S. records left to soak in a bucket of bleach. A hodgepodge assembled from teenage experiments with guitar pedals and loops and more recent recordings of him mangling his SH-101, the mercilessly noisy Teenage Tapes is sometimes captivating, sometimes incomprehensible.
Figuring out which date from the teenage years and which are more recent is impossible—pointless, too, because there isn't much difference. The more substantial tracks are padded with blackened bits of formless noise, holding the record together like tar. From the gruesome buzz of the A1 to the the chewed-up-tape-set-on-fire aesthetic of the B3, they're short and not likely to leave much of an impression.
The longer tracks on Teenage Tapes are the kind of thing Blackest Ever Black must receive as demos on a daily basis, full of references to post-punk and various '80s synth touchstones. A2's drums stutter through dank cavern atmospherics, B2 is the requisite EBM-inspired number, and B4 embellishes itself with a hummable bassline and softly moaning synths. Only A3 sounds like a revelation—its hazy end-of-days techno plods with the dejection of black metal. The rest of it sounds like what (some of) it is: a kid in his bedroom channeling his teenage idols into the darkest, most menacing music he can make. It's an interesting artifact for fans of the young producer, but not an essential item on its own terms.
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