ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: JUNE 22ND 2010


Baths is the brainchild of Will Wiesenfeld, a resident Los Angeles beat maker whose debut album Cerulean was released one year ago to limited fanfare. One of the most difficult things about Cerulean is defining its sound; genre-hopping beat boys who are driving forth a particular sound are experimenting with sampling and layering in a way they weren’t three or four years ago because they are comparatively younger. It’s a generational thing, and the fact that these boys were influenced by the shifting and merging musical landscape of the mid 00s is the primary reason for their current pioneering. Flying Lotus’ Cosmogramma received perhaps the most attention that an album so stylistically diverse could accumulate without breaking through into the mainstream and confusing a whole bunch of new listeners. Cerulean stands out because of how organic it feels. Wiesenfeld’s lyrics and a lot of the vocal melodies here play like great pop music which is an element that this beat scene was really lacking. Whilst it’s true that most of the record is backed by drum machines, there’s an impressive display of other sound snippets peppering these songs. The reason it works is because they’re used sparingly amidst the density of the beats. For every twisted and convoluted beat there’s usually an underlying piano riff creating rich, sublime soundscapes.

Cerulean proves to be an overall warm and inviting listening experience. Lovely Bloodflow and Aminals are lucid and temperate at every point, the former’s jagged edges swimming in a sea of fuzzy distortion whilst the latter deploys a child’s talking voice to gently accompany the swell and thrust of its rhythmic lacerations. In Hall and You’re My Excuse To Travel, Wiesenfeld pushes his vocals higher to an almost Passion Pit-like state of rapture. Whilst it’s a welcome addition to the impressive number of contrasting elements on Cerulean, one could be forgiven for favouring the muted unfoldings of Rain Smell or the sombre closing track Departure. Plea bestows the album’s strongest chorus melody in “Boy, you are every colour, how am I visible, please tell me you need me.” It’s a spirited message of resistance in the face of intolerance and the battle for validity that same sex couples face not only in California but worldwide. It’s not just beautiful but crushing, too. It’s followed by the aforementioned Departure which appears to serve as an indirect companion piece. “Smile for me if you can, I wanna have that in my hand,” he sings in the most linear fashion; despondent and melancholic, playing out the same refrain until it ends.


These last two tracks are a reminder that Cerulean can be many things as well as melancholy. It’s rare for electronic music such as this to be invested in its emotions as much as the beats it’s supplying. The swelling piano intro of <3 gives way to dense arrangements which feel almost classical, the backing of the drum beat providing an interesting accompaniment to the stirring core of the piano, whereas the instrumental Rafting Starlit Everglades feels like a piece designed to straddle highs and lows on a more personal level. A track such as Maximalist perhaps defines Cerulean the best with its staccato drum sampling and stuttering beat machine layering. It also takes a while to unfold due to how compact the sound feels. There’s a lot going on here and whilst repeated listens bestow a familiarity, there’s still a distinct lack of structure. These songs are free falling and there’s the odd fleeting moment where the drums pause and the beats subside to take stock, accounting for what’s gone before. All that remains is a little distortion, and it feels like rain.

Whilst Cerulean successfully integrated itself within the beat sound of 2010 (I resist using the term “chillwave”), it still fell on deaf ears by the time most end-of-year polls came around. This is a word of mouth album and one of the true sleeper records of recent years (another one is Junior Boys’ Begone Dull Care). The groove in which it’s now comfortably nestled will deepen over the years as the scene it’s part of changes. Sharp and smooth, rough and clean; these are the contrasts that Cerulean plays on and it works beautifully because it repeatedly engages the brain as well as the ears. It shakes things up and provides an interesting afterthought as to how Wiesenfeld will continue Baths.