There Is No Teenage Love is a Los Angeles ambient group composed of Erik Tokle and David J. Dowling. They create big sweeping fields of sound that twinkle and resonate through deconstructing the limits of what a guitar can do. They are very, very good: who knew Los Angeles had modern ambient musicians at work?

The band just released their self-titled debut this past Wednesday. The album is seven tracks long that range from brief (for them) four minute sound pieces to thirteen minute noise excavations. They describe their technique and style as “sonic soundscapes through improvisation and live looping, manipulating guitars beyond recognition and dispensing with conventions of structure in favor of a post-modern, abstract, and painterly approach to composition.” They are exactly correct with their description: the album is a bare, complicated meditation on resonating sounds.

There Is No Teenage Love catch glimpses of what Matthew Cooper’s Eluvium and early Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts era M83 did. The seven tracks on the album are constructed to be very hazy, wallowing in large, buoyant sounds they’ve happened upon through guitar and keyboard improvisation. I can’t continue on describing their work because it is so surprisingly good and I cannot believe they made this music in Los Angeles. I would have guessed they were some German bros readying B-sides for a Kompakt Pop Ambient release. Could have fooled me!

This airy, droney, post-rock album is definitely the most unexpected musical item we’ve stumbled upon this year on LAIY. It certainly is going to be one of our favorite albums of the year as they really did nail every ambient mark. Stream the album below and give it a buy if you like it. You can also check out their Tumblr, too.