LIQUID LOVE
Baths is the solo project of 21 year old Will Wiesenfeld, Cleveland’s shy electronic lothario. A former classical music student, breaking from his disciplined musical upbringing has helped Will to fuel his desire to open his heart and pour it into music. He reveals all to BRAD BARRETT...
W
ill Wiesenfeld, AKA Baths, is the driving force behind his homemade debut Cerulean, which was released earlier in
2010 and has turned out to be one of the past 12 months major musical highlights. A rapturous- sounding blur of clogged beats, echoing piano melodies, Cerulean features Will’s disarming falsetto and unexpected clashes of hyper-tense electro melodies and ethereal instrumentation. “In terms of using samples, I don’t use any. Maybe a sample of a bass drum hit, for instance, but then I layer a hundred different things on top of it and make my own sound out of it and the construction of the actual rhythms is all my own,” he says. “The less I start out with, the more open ended it can be and the more comfortable I am. It’s like I don’t have to abide by any rules, I can do whatever I want. It’s easier when I can throw a thousand ideas around and narrow it down to the right things,” explains Will at the City Arts and Music Bar above the basement venue he’ll play a few hours later. This open field Will brings to his music demonstrates his method of sidestepping implied emotions. Rather than building a sad song from a minor key or a happy song from a major key, Will leaves ambiguity in his melodies and propels them to the desired emotional pitch with rhythms and textures that accentuate the sensual mood. “I really wanted to make something easier to digest than my older material,” he says, referencing his band [post-foetus] and his Geotic side project. “But I also wanted to create something that is very, very positive and spirited and happy at the same time. That’s the whole vibe of the album even though there’s more personal and intense subject matter, it’s told through a positive lens and feels more reminiscent than directly linked and depressing.” Will manages to sum up his own music exquisitely. Describing Baths as “intentionally of the moment” and “what I actually want to put out in the world and my main artistic expression”, it’s clear that it’s a world away from his derivative, ambient Geotic material. “I used Digital Performer and Ableton Live and I just used a bunch of
58 3pickup
instruments. I’m lucky enough to have an upright piano in my bedroom, it’s the family piano from when I was, like, four. I used an electric guitar, electric bass, my brother’s acoustic guitar, a lot of singing, layers of vocals. With the construction of beats and stuff, there’s a little bit of samples - maybe two or three percent across the whole album that’s like actual drummer library samples - but the rest of those rhythms are all blurry with layers and sounds I put on top of it and the rest is stuff I did in my bedroom: snapping my fingers, clicking on the table, closing and opening doors. I’ll record tons of layers of that type of stuff and then have to eliminate them. Trial and error and a lot of split second decision making.” The incredible Hall begins a cut-up, aquatic burst of burbling voices before breaking into a loop-driven, modern gospel chorus that’s more swan-dive beautiful than anything else you’ve heard in 2010. Plea, as well, is an otherworldly luminescence on the unexpectedly beautiful face of electronica, while You’re My Excuse to Travel sprinkles that gorgeous family piano throughout in eloquent fashion. It’s truly an album to grasp and hold tight. Considering his beginnings though, it could’ve turned out very different and perhaps sewn with far more blatant virtuosity. “I was classically trained from the age of four until about 12 on piano and then I sort of had a falling out with classical music and couldn’t stand it anymore! The way I was playing piano was so rigid and robotic and completely devoid of emotion. I was playing music that, of course... the composers when they wrote it was a very, very emotional experience for them, but none of that was being communicated to me,” he explains, perhaps reflecting the lives of other kids whose parents urged them to be musical. “I took a break from that and when I started playing again, maybe a year and a half later, I only played my own music and only played what I wanted to play and I was like ‘Oh music is thrilling!’” he says, adopting a gushing tone. “At that point in time it had become a horrible, tiresome thing but I wouldn’t trade that experience. The spinal memory and the motion in my fingers is something
I would never have had otherwise. I owe it all to the fact that I had that training and now I’m able to make ideas come out as fast as they do... because that’s all it is. Technical proficiency is just a tool to make writing music easier.” Will makes an amazing case for really learning your chosen instrument, though it’s unlikely that without his revelation he would’ve embarked on an album which he hopes – rather sweetly - will help him “to look into someone who might be the right person.” However, in the scaling melodies, the cloudy and dream-like shimmering, the pulse- setting rhythms that occupy the core and drive the surging burst of feeling that erupts from within, Cerulean seems to sum up – in pure sound - the rush of being loved- up. Certainly though, Will’s ambition is to keep Baths consistently evolving. Will the next Baths album be crushing and oppressive or lustful and angry compared to Cerulean’s tender tones? Baths’ music represents an extension of a man’s very being, rather than a mere playground for his formidable musical expertise. PM
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