Let Me See What You Got

DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ “Honey”

DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ’s new album Destiny is an incredibly bold body of work, even beyond its epic but somehow not entirely exhausting four hour run time. The general tone and structure of the record is similar to the luxurious party vibe of The Avalanches’ classic Since I Left You, but with most of the nostalgia-button-smashing musical references and textures coming from about 1997 through 2002. (That Avalanches album came out in 2001, so it’s one more reference to the era.)

Destiny sounds like a paradise constructed specifically for people born between 1978 and 1985; an older Millennial’s imaginary world in which 9/11 never happened and the later Clinton-era boom years extended into infinity. It’s also like having your brain flooded with a thousand happy memories at once, overlapping and bleeding into one incomprehensible but ecstatic song. “Honey” is basically the overture of Destiny, establishing the tonal palette, musical themes, and general ironic-yet-entirely-earnest sensibility of the record within eight minutes. It also acclimates your ear to Sabrina’s skill for building dense layers of sounds, often to such an extent that the music becomes overwhelming and it feels a bit like you’re listening to four different songs at once that share the same beat.

Buy it from Bandcamp.