Sounds on the Ground #26: Baths
By: Samuel Smith, Dan Monsell
Whats the deal:
Hailing from “The Valley” (N.B. The Capitalisation) in California is an oft used U.S. colloquial short-hand for a materialistic, self-centred, hedonistic, quirky/cute but not necessarily physically attractive (subjective) and often sexually promiscuous young lady (OED see “Essex Girl”) Valspeak is also a form of this trait, based on an exaggerated version of '80s California English.
Though this stereotype couldn’t be further from the reality of Valley-boy Will Wiesenfeld (for one thing, he is a guy), it can be used as a loose analogical framework to lay over the production methods of his musical sobriquet BATHS. Though it is tempting to place Baths within the same realm as glo-fi or chillwave or whatever stupid name some bored kid has dreamt up, the LA-based solo producer has a forthcoming full-length on Anticon and - though label backing should never be presumed as a shorthand for quality - in the case of Anticon they are rarely misplaced in finding quality.
BATHS' Ableton-built tracks are full of esoteric, unquantised beats that masquerade as conventional mpc-toting hip-hop into Animal Collective-ish sweeps of reverbed, ambiguous vocals. This whole unquantised beat thing has been massive in LA for a while now, but it’s really been around for a few turns round the block. Folks like the Glaswegian, Warp-signed Hudson Mohawke have been waving the flag for some time now, but it’s only since LA’s own Flying Lotus released the brilliant Cosmogramma that people have started paying real attention. What really marks BATHS apart from the rest is the sheer youthful freshness of his songs. The woozy Dilla-like beats and gauzy samples are all background to the emotive youthful hopelessness that drive what are essentially a group of teenage love songs. Album track "Plea" takes Baths' blunted beats meets sun-kissed pop aesthetic one step further, complete with warm falsetto vocals by Wiesenfeld himself. "Love, this is a dark world / and i've lost focus / please tell me you need me…boy, you are every colour, / how am I visible, / please tell me you need me" he opines from behind sheets of phased, oscillating synths and swelling reverb. Interestingly, his heartfelt testimonials are as lyrically ambiguous as Shakespeare’s Sonnet #20.
Will told Pitchfork.com a few months later that "everything musically with me has been about finding something else, about going someplace else…I've always been super inspired by a lot of Japanese culture because I feel it's like the exact opposite of what my life's always been”. His musical methods stand as testimony to his forward thinking entirely digital set-up of uber-performance software Ableton Live, as favoured by Jamie Lidell in his mind-warped loop-based live performances. Seen live, BATHS is a fury of movement, pushing flashing buttons and turning knobs on the Ableton control surface like a man on an out of control treadmill, blending the lines between the boring-as-heck laptop performers and all-analogue-heads.
What can I hear:
Aside from the usual myspace shazaam, BATHS is quite the blog favourite, and he’s been P.R savvy generous enough to distribute a few of his tracks and remixes during the build up to the release of his album. A few of them can be found and downloaded for free from the blog XLR8R, the tracks: Maximalist, Hall, a remix of Hall by fellow Southern Californian The One AM Radio in which he tags Mr Wiesenfeld’s less than dulcet tones for the Loz Feliz Ladies Choir, and a remix he did of another Californian beat maker who goes by the name of Shlomo. Also an ace remix of Fol Chen song ‘In Ruins’ can be downloaded from Pitchfork. His debut album Cerulean is also out now on Anti-con for when you’re done being a freeloader. Right, no excuses now then, eh?
Where can I see them:
Err…California. That’s about it really. Even though he’s got a debut album out the fellow is doing very little in the way of touring right now, so you’ll have to make do with the few cool video performances up on his myspace, the yourstruly piece for Pitchfork is particularly ace. Watch out for UK dates later this year, maybe at a Rockfeedback presents.. show perhaps ? Who knows what could happen...
We all know music peaked in 1994, so give me a sound-bite about how we could compare them to some kind of obscure band from the Britpop era:
Not an easy one this week really, as this section seems to get harder and harder the greater distance we travel from Britpop. That is until the revival comes around and we're more than spoiled for choice. For this we'll take a standardly inventive soul from the movement - say Tjinder Singh from Cornershop, thrust a laptop and a bunch of hardware into his clutches, lock him a bedroom in California with nothing but his own mind and a desire to get his head around the new fangled technology. Bam gazam - Baths there is.
Artists in this article: Baths