I’ve long been a fan of the Oberlin College duo, Teengirl Fantasy. I first saw them perform during the 2008 CMJ Music Festival in a community art center at 1 PM. Logan Takahashi and Nick Weiss were sitting on the ground with their keyboards in front of them and their eyes didn’t leave their instruments once. We, the audience of about 5 people, were totally ancillary to anything they were doing.

From their new instruments, waves and washes rose up over us, transporting us along the sparse yet complex soundscapes taking us for a ride like the best of ambient music, transporting us out of the dirty concrete floored space pulling us along to Arcturus. They tore loose elements from various dance traditions that fired conflicting synaptic responses, an element from a house classic here, an arpeggio from “Sandstorm” there. Yet, each was sublimated to the music of the subconscious, the music of memories and nostalgia, closer to Shinichi Osawa’s Mondo Grosso than Paul Van Dyke.

They didn’t have any music for sale, so I left empty-handed but not empty-headed. Over the next year, I’d get a chance to see them again, on a better system, making music that was more confident but no less deep and expansive. The TGIF CDR that came in a Ziploc baggie was chillwave before chillwave became the codified commodity for Brooklyn summers and Absolut Vodka parties. TGIF was dance aware but not slavishly devoted to the conventions of those genres.

This translated to their live work and each show continued to entertain and enrapture me. The release of last year’s “Portofino” single on Rough Trade was practically a blue print for a genre that heretofore was the domain of acts like Panda Bear and Dan Deacon’s less manic phases; minimal in construction but frantic and sweaty in those elements, a contradiction in speed and tone.

It is with a near slavish devotion that I consumed any bit of news regarding Teengirl Fantasy’s album 7AM for Mekon, from the frankly brilliant first single “Cheaters,” to actually holding it in my hands yesterday. It is worth the wait.

Is dream house taken as an affectation? If not, let’s apply it here; liberally.

Nick and Logan continue to make excellent electronic music that isn’t made for the dance floor but isn’t so distant as to be IDM in the Warp records mode.

In addition to the spacey spectral house such for which they may be most known, they have dance abstractions such as the percussive heavy “Koi Pond” and tonal mood piece “In the Rain,” whose chimes dance across the track like a gentle sun shower. Tracks such as “Make the Move” and “Forever the Feeling” give into that earlier frantic relaxation Ketamine feeling of earlier releases from the duo. The vocal tracks “Cheaters” (working with Love Committee’s “Cheaters Never Win”) and “Dancing In Slow Motion” both show the complimentary sides to Teengirl Fantasy.

“Cheaters” is a Grown N Sexy version of early Chicago House, 808 kicks and snapped snares left out in the rain while “Dancing in Slow Motion” speaks directly to early 1980s Latin Freestyle in an anything goes pure diva house singing from Shannon Funchess (Light Asylum, !!!). I am hoping for huge floor-filling remixes for “Dancing in Slow Motion” as it speaks directly to my Johnny Vicious / Masters At Work love of hands in the air abandon.

Teengirl Fantasy’s 7 AM is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. There isn’t a huge deviation to their sound as much of 7 AM sounds like much of the TGIF demos, yet what evolution is at hand is wonderful to behold. Get this album, now.