Teenage Sequence
Cro Cro Land Festival 2022On June 1st 2021, London-born South Asian multi-instrumentalist/ songwriter/producer Dewan-Dean Soomary released his first single as Teenage Sequence, All This Art. Released by trans/queer US tastemaker label Get Better Records.All This Art turned a scathing eye on the small hypocrisies of a music industry that doesn’t want face its own racial shortcomings— while poking fun at itself and sarcastically sending up the warped relationship we all have to ourselves and our art.
Clocking in at 6.29 of spoken word over a dance beat as bright, tart, and cutting as the song’s lyrics, All This Art broke modern rules of songwriting in favour of brutal honesty and bittersweet fun. It found critical praise from the likes of Flood Magazine, Alt Press, Stereogum, and Under the Radar; it was playlisted by NPR and received heavy radio play from the likes of Soho Radio, KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, Double J and KEXP, the last of which made it their song of week and featured Teenage Sequence as the face of their weekly Music That’s Been Great mix.
In December 2021, All This Art was formally released in the UK by Everything Suck Music as a double A-Side cassette with new single The City Is Hungover.
The City is Hungover took the listener on a weary, self-deprecating journey through the morning after the night before - a journey Soomary physically took himself through the streets NYC in the track’s music video, which was directed by internationally-known Brazilian sculptor Juliana Cerquiera-Leite. The track reached across genre lines, winning fans from the likes of Radio-X’s legendary John Kennedy (who made Hungover his X-Posure Hot One), the late, great Janice Long, Giles Bidder and Simone Butler of Soho Radio, another KEXP playlisting— and even one of the godfathers of grunge, Pearl Jam’sJeff Ament, who included The City is Hungover in his top 5 songs of 2021.
2022 looks bright for Teenage Sequence. The band has shows lined up at some of the coolest festivals London has to offer, collaborations with several bands on the horizon, and an imminent debut album full of acidtongued and relatable stories about the humiliations and alienations of modern life: the casual racism of the music industry or your crush, 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. Lush synthesizers, fuzzy guitars, and relentless 909 beats build a soundscape that is as sleek, pulsing, merciless, and ultimately as irresistible as London itself— demanding that the listener dance, even as it reminds them that the dance-floor is burning.
If you know, you know to be excited.