Baths: Romaplasm (Indie Exclusive Colored Vinyl) Vinyl LP

“I’m not as emotive with real world things as I am when I’m neck deep in anime, video games, books or comics.” Same… Will Wiesenfeld wraps up a busy year that saw the first ever official full-length release on a label by his Geotic project (Abysma, Ghostly International), which has been a catch-all for his ambient and beat-centric projects for nearly 10 years now. On Romaplasm, Wiesenfeld dons his most well-known guise for song-oriented projects: Baths. His third full-length for Anticon attempts to tackle classic Romanticism, but on Will’s own terms: “It’s about taking ideas as far as you can even if they don’t work out. I’m trying to capture feelings that might be more obscure when translated to music, but always seem to resonate with me.” Aesthetically, very little remains from Baths’ 2010 Anticon debut Cerulean, which juxtaposed Will’s hyper-emotive vocals with glitchy beats inspired by L.A.’s Low End Theory scene (with a few exceptions: the woozy “Human Bog” and strobelit rave of “Adam Copies;” two of the record’s most interesting tracks). Instead, the beats on Romaplasm sound largely informed by Will’s work as Geotic: slinky house beats interspersed with acoustic guitar and saccharine melodies, albeit without any deliberate parallels: “In making this record, I wanted to be as self indulgent as possible. To not think too hard about what I was doing stylistically as much as honing in on what material felt inspired and felt really good to make. Those were the only things that I wanted to pursue.” Indie-exclusive mint green colored vinyl with free digital download, limited edition of 1000.

• mint green colored vinyl
• indie-exclusive
• limited edition
• 1000 copies pressed
• digital download included
• music label: Anticon 2017

reviewed by fifty-fifty clown 11/2017