Teenage elders

This debut album from 19-year-old Dubliner Aidan Wall is an engrossingly naïve journey through amateur 8-bit chiptune. Occasionally ramshackle and distinctly lo-fi, it's all the more endearing for it. It simply sounds like a guy in his bedroom having some fun (erm, I mean that in the sweetest sense possible). Over the course of Teenage Elders, we get twelve tunes equally indebted to old Gameboy games and modern dubstep. While it doesn't reinvent the wheel, that's never the aim. It is electronica stripped of pretension, childlike and innocent with a creeping undertone of unease. Burial at a funfair, essentially. The song titles ('Super Fun Hipster Suicide Party', anyone?) betray the often playful nature of the music. 'Little Lost Bear' is upbeat synth organ music, while 'Crying Outside Clubs' is all slippery melodies and snatches of soft vocals.
'I Lost My Corpse Paint' is a fitting album centrepiece. Gnarled electric guitar and fuzzy synths set against Wall's most effective beat, it's an 8-minute hook that buzzes around your brain. It's not all as strong. Some songs come across as half-ideas, and after a while you feel as if you're permanently trapped in some '90s Nintendo videogame. No matter: the slight mid-album lull is lifted for the final brace of songs. 'Thursday Nights' sounds genuinely massive despite itself, while 'Coming Down' is a stately closing number. Decipherable vocals enter the fray for the first time and a mature assuredness ends the album on a real high note.
If this is a marker for the future, Hipster Youth may be delighting the hipster in you for years to come.