Skittering electro that is by turns incredibly beautiful and beguilingly intricate.
You briefly turn your back on a scene and everything changes. Dubstep was (seemingly) pegged until 2010 albums from the likes of Skream and Rusko made it clear that the once-gloomy genre had taken substantial steps towards an accessible, mainstream-friendly sound since Burial got a few bookies sweating with his 2008 Mercury nomination. Chillwave now covers a slew of bedroom-based individuals, purveyors of luscious layers and fuzzy atmospherics – see, in particular, Washed Out and Neon Indian. But Baths, aka Los Angeles resident Will Wiesenfeld, has gone and tinkered somewhat with the tried-and-tested formula, and now we have a record that’s got a foot in two slightly different stylistic camps.
On the left, those chillwave (glo-fi, dream-pop, whatever) protagonists; Baths’ closest parallel probably South Carolina’s Toro Y Moi. On the right, the skew-whiffy beat-doodles of Brainfeeder don Flying Lotus and his disciples in playfully skittering sounds (see also: Lorn, HudMo, Oriol). The combination could have resulted in a chaotic long-player, but Wiesenfeld has reined in anything too buck-wild to deliver an immersive experience that, while offering little that’s not already been heard before, is by turns incredibly beautiful and beguilingly intricate.
Lees de rest van deze review op BBC CD recensies (Engels)
Bron: BBC Music