Baths :: Out & touring & still loving Bjork
22-year old Will Wiesenfeld (aka Baths, his musical moniker) turned heads with his debut CD last year, "Cerulean." Now the SoCal-based artist is touring the country. EDGE spoke to Wiesenfeld about his music, traveling & his love of Bjork.
Twenty-two-year-old, out musician Will Wiesenfeld has come a long, long way in the year that has passed since he released the debut album, "Cerulean", under his principal musical moniker, Baths. As a classically trained musician growing up on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Calif., Wiesenfeld had long pursued music as his passion on the side of doing "normal" kid things: Finishing high school, attending college, planning elaborate oceanside "coming out" pronouncements to his brother.
But Wiesenfeld eventually came to a point where he felt music needed to move to the front burner. He dropped out of college and poured himself into his ambient-meets-avant-garde electronic music craft. The first result of that effort, Cerulean, is an ethereal listening experience that landed on endless "Best Albums of 2010" lists and has launched the musician into a seemingly endless itinerary of tour dates and engagements all over the world.
That voyage landed Wisenfeld in Chicago this past Sunday for a set at the Pitchfork Music Festival, the annual three-day event that has become a performing outlet for the indie music-centric website Pitchfork. The tour continues with dates in Seattle this week and Montreal the next. (For more on the group and to learn of other upcoming dates, visit Baths’ website.
"It might sound like a mess on paper," wrote Pitchfork critic Nick Neyland in giving Cerulean an honorable mention for the site’s Album of the Year citations, "but Wiesenfeld is an excellent curator who is capable of tying all these broad strokes together into a palatable whole. He manages to shift expectations even more with the genre-bucking garrulousness of his live show, further adding to the welcome dashes of wit and color that are riddled throughout these recordings."
While Wiesenfeld was taking advantage of a rare break from life on the road in his home in Chatsworth, Calif., EDGE spoke with the talented musician about his life, his music and his love of Bjork, the Icelandic icon.
Lessons learned
EDGE: Hi Will! How are you and what have you been up to as of late?
Will Wiesenfeld: I sort of feel like I’m still in the mode of coming down from tour. I’ve toured pretty much solid from February until May 8 or so. I had a couple of one-offs beyond that but I had just never done extensive touring before. It’s really exhausting and I didn’t prepare effectively.
I’m a little tired out even now and I’m just about to head out on another month and a half or two months of touring again. In the meantime, I’m sort of looking to start recording my new album but I don’t know if I have time to really get in the mode for it. I may have to get into it in September.
EDGE: What do you feel will be some things you’ll do differently when you’re preparing for future tours, based on your recent on-the-road experiences? Any lessons learned?
WW: What’s so funny about that is I didn’t learn too much other than maybe that I need to go with somebody else. So much of my experience in Europe was confusing and slightly boring because I didn’t speak any other languages. In Paris, when I was there by myself, I could only eat what I could point at because I don’t speak a word of French. I ate a lot of very bizarre fast food pasta that was not that great. But going with somebody else, the experience is very different, especially with someone who speaks French. When I was with the French promoters, it was one of the best times I had in Europe.
Story continues on following page.
Watch Baths’ video of "Lovely Bloodflow":
