Logan Takahashi - NoGeo (2016)

As half of Teengirl Fantasy, Logan Takahashi is best known for making glassy, expansive tracks. On his debut solo album, NoGeo however, he creates an intimate world of fertile, furtive rhythms. Throughout the album, techno-tinged patterns unfurl with zeal and digital melodies slowly rise and fall. If the music of Teengirl evokes widescreen, technicolor club scenes, NoGeo is a zoomed-in study of timbre, rhythm, and melody. Much of NoGeo was composed using Elekrton's Monomachine, which contributes to its minimalist aesthetic. There's a uniformity to the tracks on NoGeo; though each has its own distinct, vibrant shape, all of them are cut from the same cloth - built on a sturdy rhythmic foundation that's ornamented with buoyant candescent, sounds. "People talk a lot about borderlessness in dance music, and indeed I've always been most drawn to music that exists in or a works to create new grey areas," Takahashi explains. "From the late '80s Japanese Neo Geo genre to the early '00s Brooklyn tabletop electronics scene, I've always been inspired by the notion of being able to create your own vocabulary.