Will Wiesenfeld, known as Baths, writes electronic music that continuously seems to be on the verge of falling apart. I've heard it called "glitch" pop, and the name is quite fitting. The music is unsettling; it sets you on edge. Electronic music isn't exactly supposed to be uncertain; the genre's precise repetition rarely skips a beat, if you will.
But here we are listening to Baths' debut album
Cerulean, our heartbeats raised by the anxiety of the music. It's the aural equivalent of watching a clown on stilts meander his way through a crowded fairground. And yet we can't turn it off because it's beautiful. In all good music there is a tension, a conflict that is at play and must be negotiated, resolved, or held up for all to hear. Most often this tension is in the music itself, the melodies or chords; other times it's the tension between the lyrics and the music. Baths creates his tension between the intimacy of his bedroom pop melodies and the cold, glitchy electronic rhythms with which he supports them. It's as if the robot is trying to become human by pursuing imperfection.
"That was where it was idealized for me—where the experimentation in electronic music was still there, but there was humanity to it. That was the perfect blend of everything for me."
Does Baths succeed at this attempted "perfect blend"? The album isn't revolutionary by an means; indie electronic music was "humanized" long ago by acts like The Notwist and The Books. But isolating the album from any supposed—how does Pitchfork put it... "avant beat music that's coming out of L.A. right now"—finds us with a solid collection of electronic pop songs that should have a decent shelf life in this fast-paced digital age.
[mp3] Baths :: Hall
[mp3] Baths :: ♥
Cerulean will be available for
digital download on July 6.
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