London-born British South Asian multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Dewan-Dean Soomary didn’t really think that his first single, as Teenage Sequence, “All This Art,” was going to do anything except bomb. But after a conversation with a mutual friend the song found its way into the inbox of Alex Lichtenauer, owner of queer/trans tastemaker label Get Better Records. Though Get Better had built its reputation on its release of cutting edge punk and hardcore records, Lichtenauer saw the socio-political disco punk of Teenage Sequence as a natural expansion of the Get Better family. In June 2021 ‘All This Art’ was released and, much to the surprise of its creator, it did pretty much everythingexceptbomb.
“I didn’t really expect much. I knew that the song had a thing about it; I knew that from when I first started writing it, but I didn’t think anyone would like it. The whole spoken word rant post ‘Losing My Edge’ electro-disco-punk thing wasn’t—maybe still isn’t— in fashion. Couple that with what I was saying, as
well, and I didn’t think anyone would be interested. But I just couldn’t sit on the sidelines, semi-retired, moaning on Twitter anymore.”
‘All This Art’ found its way onto multiple track-of-the-day, week, and month lists: Stereogum, NPR, Brooklyn Vegan, Alt Press, Killing Moon, KCRW, KEXP. Follow-up singles ‘The City Is Hungover’ and ‘D.I.S Connect’, released on GBR in America and Everything Sucks Music in the UK/EU, saw that support extend to BBC Radio 1, R6 Music, and Radio X, including the 'Xposure Hot-One’ from John Kennedy, who also invited Teenage Sequence to play his ‘The Remedy’ club night.
The debut self titled Teenage Sequence album was primarily recorded in Soomary’s flat in Bethnal Green, East London, where he turned decades’ worth of experience in the music industry into catty, cutting, and timely musical insights.
“I had a ton of unfinished ideas that are often comprised of one solid bass line or synth part. I’d take like 4 bars of music and create songs out of those - adding and taking away parts to signify the different parts of the song, rather than having chord changes or using the more traditional guitar band song writing tropes. I love songs that have one thing running throughout them that doesn’t change— you have to bend to that part.”
These ideas were then taken into Savage Sound Studios, where co-producer Kevin Vanbergen, drummer James Gulliver, and Soomary’s now-wife Kristin Ferebee (formerly of indie-folk group Beirut) added their talents to the final album.
“I had tried working with a couple of different producers who for one reason or another didn’t work out. Once I had written ‘The City Is Hungover’, I just thought to call Kevin. I figured he might get it— in this day and age where popular songs seldom go past 3 minutes, it’s a bit insane to call someone and be like, ‘Hey, we haven’t done any work together for a decade, but I’ve got this 8 minute song that’s basically the same thing over and over again, and it’s about being hungover, and it’s spoken-word… fancy working on it together?’ But that’s what I did, and Kev got it. Kevin brought in James, who also got it, and by the time we finished it, I was like: okay, this plus my wife— that’s who’s making this record”.
The album takes you on a musical journey through some of music’s more shadowy intersections, with proto-house, acid, krautrock, UK garage, post punk, disco, and pop creating a soundtrack over which Soomary tell acid tongued and relatable stories about the humiliations and alienations of modern life. What kind of stories? Well: the casual racism of a date-gone wrong and of the music industry, the endless series of hangovers that keep you stuck as an eternal kid, the despair of living in a world on the verge of destruction, the yearning when you fall in love despite all of this. Self-aware, with a dark humour, Soomary’s lyrics are drenched in socio-political overtones— although in his view that is a byproduct of who he is rather than a deliberate statement.
“I come from a background in explicitly political bands who used music as a platform for political standpoints. Teenage Sequence isn’t that; I simply write about my life, the world as I understand it and as I’ve experienced it. If that then becomes a social or political statement— and I know it does— then it is because my existence is a social or political statement.”
Soomary calls Texas home these days, but he’s a Londoner to his core, and it shows on his record. This debut album is soaked and grounded in the stuff of London: lush synthesisers, fuzzy guitars, and relentless 909 beats that build a soundscape as sleek, pulsing, merciless, and ultimately as irresistible as London itself. It’s a sonic burst straight from a city prone to spectacular and stylish disintegrations, one that demands that the listener dance even as it reminds them that the dance-floor is burning.
