I’m going to start out my discussion of Baths with a bold, seemingly unrelated, statement: One day, dubstep-influenced releases will be categorized as either before James Blake’s James Blake or after.
Though it is impossible to forecast the exact influence that this record will have, James Blake (Wilhellm Scream embedded below) already provides a new light to interpret the music of his contemporaries. Whereas artists such as Gold Panda and Mount Kimbie, two of James Blake’s post-dubstep peers, create tracks focused on central beats, James Blake composes songs with instrumental and vocal progression. On James Blake, he transforms dubstep’s trademarks from sonic into songwriting tools. James Blake changes the expectations for post-dubstep; it can produce real songs, not just static jams.
Some of Baths’ 2010 debut LP, Cerulean, fits right in with the likes of Gold Panda and Mount Kimbie. Aminals, for example, is more or less structurally static. The brief lapses of the main sample only serve to emphasize the sample’s reintroduction instead of moving the track to new places. None of this is to say Aminals is in any way “bad”. In fact, it’s an excellent track. Its ethereal samples and challenging percussion make it beautiful, surprising, and danceable. When Baths focuses on making tracks, particularly on Aminal and Hall, the results are worthy of the genre’s upper echelon.
Other songs toe the line of James-Blake-style songwriting. Lovely Bloodflow employs many of the same strategies used in James Blake: minimal production, multi-layered vocals, and dubstep-influenced percussion. It progresses through various stages of instrumentation, such as the jazzy piano featured at two and a half minutes and the acoustic guitar that comes into focus around three minutes in as the percussion drops out. On top of the instrumentation, the vocals feature bold and creative melodies that are often catalysts for the instrumental shifts. Like James Blake, Lovely Bloodflow is a veritable song.
These two examples illustrate the conflict that Baths has been struggling with: pitting his penchant for songwriting against his skill in electronic production. Ultimately, the winner of this struggle is the listener. Cerulean, almost perfectly split between songs (7) and tracks (5), strikes a great balance between well-crafted songs and freer-flowing tracks. Whereas James Blake can be jarring emotional experience, Cerulian’s variety lets it breathe and, importantly, have a little bit of fun.
Wesleyan band Apache Kid is the night's sole opener and is scheduled to perform at 10:00 PM. The whole night is free, so make sure to take advantage of it.
3 comments:
Baths' name is Will Wiesenfeld, not Weisenstein. and he's not remotely post-dubstep. he's much more heavily informed by abstract hip-hop (see FlyLo, Daedalus et al). James Blake has a singular, intensely personal style and should not be used as a benchmark to evaluate the works of his contemporaries. and if you think most post-dubstep songs are "static jams," you're clearly not listening hard enough. also, dividing an album up into "songs" and "tracks" is MEGA DOUCHEY
but other than that, top notch post bro
ugh don't base an entire post on a 'post-genre' classification that doesn't signify anything. a genealogy of futuree electronic sound is way more complex and extensive than 3 artists who've emerged in the past few years. the guy might as well stand up on his own if the infinite designation of James Blakean "post-dubstep" is the main thing your post has going for him.
& there's a better reason why dubstep-influenced releases will be classified as before or after James Blake's eponymous -- chronology.
Thanks for the name correction, sorry for the mixup.
As for the other suggestions, sorry if I seemed to stick too rigidly to genre classifications, the importance of James Blake, and the songs vs. tracks idea. It wasn't intended to come off as an absolute analytical analysis, it just seemed like an interesting way to talk about the music of Baths. I admit there were instances where the terms I used lack delicacy, which I knew before posting, but, unfortunately, sometimes a writer has to make the choice between thoroughness and clarity/brevity. I apologize if any of my indelicate labels offended you.
I appreciate the suggestions, even if they do come in a less than constructive form.
Post a Comment