Sunday, December 5, 2010

I Promise I'll Stop Soon...



But I just can't get enough of this bedroom electronica phase I've been stuck in, hypnotized by these downtempo chilled out beats ideal for, well, chillin' out. We BZNZmen have been hard at work this week preparing our Best of 2010 features, and I desperately wanted to include Los Angeles producer Baths, but he just missed the cut for my top 10. His July release Cerulean on Anticon is a pretty album, slotting in somewhere along the Brainfeeder/Ghostly International continuum of electronica artists (Teebs and Mux Mool readily come to mind).

Most of the songs here aren't that different from things you might hear coming from producers like Bibio, or even more experimental outfits like The Books, but for a debut from a 21 year old guy, it is a confident statement. As a nice addition, every so often Baths (the stage name of Will Wiesenfeld) will throw in vocals that sound the way you wish Passion Pit sounded. While that guy screeches along on some of the more grating ballads Passion Pit made, Wiesenfeld's falsetto works nicely with the piano loops on "You're My Excuse to Travel" or "Hall" and his voice lends gravitas to tracks like "Plea". "Indoorsy" makes for a track that Of Montreal wishes they could have recorded, which despite the title takes on almost cosmic space with its glitches and fuzz.

Not everything on Cerulean is quite so melancholy or textbook glitchy, with album high points "Aminals" sounding like a competent Bibio knockoff sure to get your head nodding. All in all, a solid album, and with all the buzz about Baths's live shows (he was one of Pitchfork's darlings at CMJ this year), I'm excited to see him headline a tour with Braids and Star Slinger, coming through Chi-town in February.

Baths - Aminals by musicmule

Baths - Hall by A Future Animal

Baths - Indoorsy by We Are A Waste

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