Baths: Cerulean
Posted on November 11th, 2010 by
Baths is the project of a certain Will Wiesenfeld, an indie beat-maker from L.A. Go no further than Cerulean if you’re in the need of top notch chillwave beats. I particularly enjoy the melody of “Aminals” and really like the fact that one track is simply titled “♥”.
The official album page articulately sums things up:
A general romanticism persists on Cerulean, both in its lushness of sound and in Baths’ lyrics as they capture the whimsy and wistfulness of relationships. On the taut, piano-driven "♥," he sings of two lovers escaping under the cover of night, voice swaying and quavering à la Daniel Rossen in Department Of Eagles. For "Aminals," the album’s most unabashedly joyous track, Baths lets others do the talking, weaving children’s voices into a field of instruments first played live, then chopped into interlocking bits.
Baths excels at crafting thick, living compositions that, while dense, never sound needlessly busy. To this end he employs guitars, bass, various keys, snapping scissors, clicking pens, rustling blankets and more. On record, these sounds lose their origins, congealing into roiling melodic tracks like "Hall" and "Plea," or delivering something stormy and ebullient, like late-album standout “You’re My Excuse To Travel.” In either case, Cerulean handily portrays Baths as a vital new talent unbound by genre and spurred on by song.
Track list:
- Apologetic Shoulder Blades
- Lovely Bloodflow
- Maximalist
- ♥
- Aminals
- Rafting Starlit Everglades
- Hall
- You’re My Excuse To Travel
- Rain Smell
- Indoorsy
- Plea
- Departure