Baths, Cerulean
Anticon
Will “Baths” Wiesenfeld’s debut album leaps from style to style, from Four Tet-inspired folktronica (“Aminals”) to Autechre’s early experiments in ghostly arpeggios (“?”). It contains allusions to L.A. such as Daedelus and Flying Lotus, and the sound is pillow-soft, (mostly) instrumental beat music reinterpreted as gauzy synth-pop. (When Baths sings, his voice ranges from a humming lullaby to a trebling falsetto.) If Cerulean is essentially the sum of its influences, then at least it’s a vision of music-making as a deeply personal bedroom exercise. Listening to it is like reading a diary with few words yet plenty of cryptic insights.
