Baths, Cerulean [anticon.]
Reviewed by: Chris Bosman
California label anticon. started as one of the three major players in the experimental hip-hop scene of the early 00s. The other two, Rhymesayers and Definitive Jux, were both more traditional than anticon. Where Atmosphere was spitting rural equivalents to what had typically been a coastal genre, and El-P was crafting productions as cinematic and epic as his own widescreen narratives, anticon. took the route of the weird. Their first hit on the radar came in the form of cLOUDDEAD’s self-titled LP, which combined hazy atmospherics with verbose, double and triple-timed rapping, with slam poetry, with prank call skits (?) and mashed them into something undeniably human, if seeming to be hip-hop only in the vaguest sense.
Baths, the bedroom beatmaking project of Will Wiesenfeld, makes a lot of sense in that context. While Wiesenfeld’s skills as a producer certainly have their roots in hip-hop, they also call to mind a number of other acts that blend hip-hop with other experiments. The influence of former cLOUDDEAD member and current WHY? mastermind Yoni Wolf shows through on songs like “Lovely Bloodflow” and “Plea,” while closer “Departure” could have been a Washed Out b-side. And the beats throughout are heavy and inventive enough that dude’s first break was playing alongside L.A. maestros Flying Lotus, Nosaj Thing and Daedelus.
The first thing you notice about Baths is the strength of those beats. The bass and snares on opener “Apologetic Shoulder Blades” lag just slightly behind the beat, creating a woozy, discombobulating counterpoint to the track’s bed of vocals and sped-up xylophone runs. The straight forward piano rhythm of “♥” gains an otherworldly quality when the shakers and kicks refuse to line up. “Rain Smell” may be the most impressive, as the beat doesn’t exist as its own musical element, so much as it’s created by how it removes volume from the song’s backbone of static noises.
Under his undeniable talents with percussive elements, however, Wiesenfeld’s greatest asset may be his eclecticism. There are a ton of sounds on any given song. On “Hall,” static, blown out synthesizer alarm sounds, acoustic guitars and light static fight against each other, before they all somehow become part of the same elegant melodic element that Baths can play against the beat. Earlier track “Aminals” takes elastic, chiming guitars, Morse code synths and slide whistles and bounces them all off each other, scattering the noises so he can drop samples of children into the vast open spaces.
What keeps these tracks from being mere exercises in technical vanity is Wiesenfeld’s sense of songcraft. Never do the beats or the kitchen-sink approach to instrumentation detract from the beautiful, ornate melodies that comprise Cerulean. Instead, they enhance every melodic decision and every Wiesenfeld vocal performance, whose voice can sound like Bon Iver (“Apologetic Shoulder Blades”), Passion Pit (“You’re My Excuse to Travel”), or even Sigur Ros (“Hall”).
Cerulean is comprised of heartbreak and love songs crafted to communicate and disguise their emotion simultaneously. Wisenfeld uses his long-cultivated skills– he spent years making music under the moniker [Post-Foetus]– to make the understated vocal performance on “Rain Smell” hit harder, to make the moment where “Indoorsy” finally comes together explode, to make the emotion of single “Maximalist” intrude and recede with elegance. It’s equally telling that he signed to anticon. as it is that anticon. signed him. Baths is a natural extension of the label’s experimental past, and an intriguing look at the possibilities in their future.
Rating: 85%