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The Brilliance of Baths
Aug 30th
Baths is 21-year old Will Wiesenfeld, a So-Cal native who grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Playing various instruments since the age of 4, he began to produce electronic music at 13. Recording under the monikers [Post-Foetus] and Geotic, both projects combined sound design, ambient soundscapes and live instrumentation, laying the groundwork for what was to come.
Baths, the next installment of Will’s musical evolution, takes his artistry to another level in all aspects of being a self-taught musician, songwriter and producer. The much-anticipated and multi-dimensional album is where his influences collide, merging musically-trained sensibilities with the nuances of electronic music – fittingly par for the course in a time when the boundaries between the two are becoming increasingly blurred.
Below, Will speaks to his process, inspirations, and more. Check it out!
What was the writing process like for this record? As your first LP under the name Baths, were there any new discoveries?
I made sure that nothing was premeditated. Most of my material under the name [Post-foetus] had very specific ideas before i ever sat down and started recording, but (at least for this first album) I wanted a departure from that sort of writing process. I made sure to just immediately start recording and having fun before I thought too deeply about anything 
Who would you love to collaborate with?
Björk! The ultimate for me. But in truth, never been much of a good collaborator… I’m learning
As a musician, how do you think classical songwriting affects the way electronic music is produced? Do the two go hand-in-hand?
Classical training goes well with composing in any genre of music, let alone electronic music. There are ideas and processes that bleed through that I can’t think of off the top of my head, but I know that it has helped me tremendously. I can translate the things happening in my head much faster than I’d otherwise be able.
Finally, what inspires you?
Everything?! Romance, animation, Japanese everythinggggg, men, water… I can’t keep track. Don’t know at any one moment what will become an inspiration.
Cerulean is out now.
Watch the video for “Lovely Bloodflow” (premiered last week on Pitchfork):
Playlist Manifesting: What Makes a Great Mixtape?
Aug 23rd
Every single one of us can be a DJ . We have the ability to be an Influencer, a Critic – a Purveyor of fresh musical content.
From an accessibility standpoint, It’s becoming easier to queue up songs and create deep playlists based on the music we love. Between music blogs and social sites, we can preview tracks from established and brand-new artists. We can easily create playlists on the fly, spreading them far and wide to share our respective tastes and express our mood to the world.
Thanks to music blogs, we have the ability to hear upcoming singles at the same time (or even before) traditional musical tastemakers do. And we’re not restricted by FCC rules or political embargos.
The great news is that online music services are consistently getting better and the catalogues are becoming deeper. We can share tracks, solicit feedback, re-share what our friends have liked and even collaborate with them.
We are eager to share and eager to please.
With all of this newfound access, content will still prevail. There’s still an art to crafting the perfect mixtape – a perfect rhythm and balance that tells a story and will make your friends hunt you down for more.
For what it’s worth (and so I’ll stop babbling to strangers about this at parties), I’ve sketched out a few thoughts on what I think creates great playlist. As a DJ and musical programmer with several years of community + college radio experience, I feel that I may be able to speak semi-intelligently on the issue (ha). And if I really have no clue what I’m talking about, please feel free to call me out in any way you see fit (a playlist battle, perhaps? double ha).
Without any further ramblings, here within please find 7 general tips for giving your best set ever.
#1 Grab ‘em from the get go.
Traditionally, a DJ mix starts slowly then builds to peak at about 3/4’ths of the way through. While this may work on a dancefloor, a digital mixtape has different needs. You’ll want to grab the ear of the listener right away. This is ‘specially important in an online world where users don’t stick around for long.
With that said, this doesn’t mean you should put all of your bangers up front. It’s not a tempo thing. Instead, think about starting with something that’s simply really, really good. A banger can be the equivalent of shouting “WAKE UPPP!!” Not many people like that.
You can open your mix in a very subtle way (for example, a classical piece or a clever acoustic cover). Whatever you think is comfortable yet arresting.
The goal here is two-fold. #1 get their attention, and #2 set the mood.
Whichever way you choose to go, the opening track should set the tone for the rest of the mix.
#2 Pick a variety of songs – but stay consistent to your theme.
I have a friend who works in music supervision. He loves trendy indie bands on the folksy, whimsical tip. And while his mixtape selections are amazing – I always learn something new – in the end it sounds like one long record by the same band. Ultimately, unless he’s hitting fans within his niche directly he’s gonna lose people. The mix is too steady and listeners will easily get bored and go away.
Choose a variety of songs from different decades and genres. This opens up your work to a larger audience with a wider variety of taste. Mixing it up also keeps listeners on their toes. It keeps it interesting.
The way to tie it all together is through your theme – whether it’s by mood, subject, or purpose.
#3 Be relevant.
Don’t choose songs “just because”. Try to pick music that is culturally relevant and/or very specific to your theme. For example, you can include an artist who happens to be in town when you publish your mix, or you can feature a recently re-issued track from a brand-new soundtrack or collection.
#4 Know how to sequence tracks.
A good playlist is reminiscent and provokes emotion. It holds you. It grabs your attention with something familiar yet unique, comfortable yet exciting, and proceeds to take you on a journey. It slowly evolves and it’s purpose unfolds from song to song.
It has peaks and valleys, highs and lows. There are times in-between songs when you may find that it’s completely silent. There are other, more frenetic moments when you can’t tell when one tune ends and the next begins.
A good mixtape puts you in that place. It removes you from the world. It can drop you into a black hole or allow you to soar. You get lost in that hard-to-describe vibe, the one that removes you from where you physically are at that very time and place.
This is all in how you decide to order the songs. You’ll want to keep this “journey” in mind as you work.
#5 Build trust.
A good mixtape gains and keeps listeners by subtly earning their trust. Ultimately, the end-game is to enable them to appreciate and/or understand your taste and where you’re headed with your selections. When that happens, you’re upping the odds that the listener will be willing to sit through the more questionable tracks to get through to something really great that’s just around the corner.
#6 Be Yourself.
For me, sharing a mixtape is just spreading the word about stuff I love to my friends.
Putting together and sharing music is very personal. If you come across as if you’re trying to speak to everyone it can sound fake. It’s like the radio adage, “pretend that you’re speaking to one person.” Just be creative and express yourself.
Admittedly, I used to try waaay too hard on this front. I conformed to what I thought others expected me to play, and in radio, what they expected me to sound like on the mic. One DJ I trained under wanted more “bedroom voice”. I thought that was gross. It wasn’t natural, and inevitably didn’t work. The funnest shows and best feedback I’ve ever received was when I didn’t care about what I sounded like. Creating a sequence based on straight-up instinct over the trying-to-be- cool factor can, and will, prevail.
When you’re free from that fear of judgment and the self-imposed expectations that come along with it, you can post anything from obscure garage buzz bands to something deliciously Top 40. Because you’re being yourself and are a friend to your audience, your authenticity will shine through and they’ll get it.
With that said, if you know most of your friends are into a particular style, post it! You want to engage your network – it’ll be more worthwhile and relevant for them to check out. Hopefully they’ll be inclined to share as well. And, in your own interest, hopefully they’ll pay more attention the next time you post.
#7 Do it for the Love.
In the end, you want a mix that you’ll love. If you love it – add it. It’s that simple.
Pick openly, freely, and without abandon. The process is the best part.
It’s a tape for you.
It’s a reflection of yourself, your mood, your interests – a bookmark of where you exist at that particular place in time.
If others dig it – sweet! If not, you’ll always have your creation to love and revisit time and time again.
20 years of Ninja Tune
Aug 21st
This year, British indie label Ninja Tune celebrates 20 years of bestowing upon us layered beats of aural bliss.
Founded by the musical duo Coldcut in 1990, the highly-regarded label has made a significant contribution as a pioneer and major influencer of the electronic music space. Now, some 90 artists deep (including artists like Ghislain Poirier, Amon Tobin, DJ Vadim, Roots Manuva, and Mr. Scruff) the label continues to serve as inspiration to artists everywhere including those they’ve sought relentlessly to promote.
Like similar electronic labels (Warp, Ghostly, DFA) the Ninja Tune sound is distinct, it’s brand is quality, and it’s street-cred thankfully remains intact in a marketplace with increasing crossover between electronic music and pop.
To celebrate, the label has issued Ninja Tune XX Box Set (to be released 10/5) , and the book 20 Years of Beats & Pieces (10/12), telling the story of the label, their artists, and their art.
More:
Free Ninja Tune iPhone app by Mobile Roadie
Related:
10 Years of Warp Records
That Darned Sock: Considering the Lifecycle of Clothing
Aug 18th
Any chance you know how to darn a sock?
Me neither.
Do you know what it *means* to darn a sock?
Me neither. Well, until about ten minutes ago, when someone explained it to me for the sake of this topic.
Darning is a technique used to repair small holes in socks and other garments. Using a needle and thread, you form stitches across the gap of the hole.
We don’t need to know about darning because when a sock gets holey, we throw the pair away. Right? Just as easily, we can purchase a brand-new replacement pair. Maybe even an upgrade – a pair of socks made from a more luxurious material, perhaps boasting a more defining cut or whimsical color and/or pattern.
When clothing goes the way of unfortunate rips, holes, stains, or other malfunctions, the easiest thing to do is replace, replace, replace.
The exchange makes sense because the value of mass-manufactured clothing is considerably less than the labor cost needed for repairs.
We don’t consider breathing new life into these sad garments by mending or patching, recycling or reusing.
Old and unwearable clothing was once used for rags, bandages or even paper. Now it’s disregarded: sent to charities, sold on e-Bay, thrown away to eventually wind up in a landfill somewhere.
We’re accustomed to this convenience. We make purchases that are immediate and disposable from places that are created to serve this very purpose. We want stuff that’s of-the-moment, of style, savvily crafting a look that fits snugly within a familiar cultural device of choice.
There are so many downsides to the mass-manufacturing of clothes. Beyond the huge issue of labor ethics, synthetic clothing is manufactured with the use of petrochemicals. Petrochemicals don’t biodegrade like natural fibers do. The garment pretty much lasts forever, and not in the good way.
Maybe it’s time to be more conscious of where our stuff comes from and who’s creating it. Awareness can yield positive results as we discover items of a higher quality, leading us to engage with nostalgic inclinations to reuse, recycle, and repeat.
I think it would be great if we could revisit the lost art of a seamstress or the work of a really amazing tailor. Clothing fits better and lasts longer, ultimately giving us a better deal in the long run.
Plus, it’s a piece of history! A well-made product that not only tells a story but will – hopefully – stand the test of time.
More:
This post was inspired by Animal Traffic and House of Vintage in Portland, OR. It was also inspired by @SocialMediate.
Did you like this article? Want more? Don’t forget to post your thoughts and feedback in the comments section!
The Age of Convenience
Jul 30th
In any given week, many people choose to have someone else:
-wash their car
-clean their house
-feed, walk, bathe, and groom their pets
-fix the car
-landscape the yard
-drive us around. to the airport, home from the pub…
-take care of financial matters including taxes
-launder and fold our clothes
-make coffee and for that matter:
-breakfast, lunch, and dinner
(Any other big ones I’m missing?)
Obviously, these things we can do ourselves.
Someone in my office roasts his own coffee. I think there’s something great about that.
As I’m writing this, I sip from my savvily-packaged (yet weak in defense, fully-recyclable) venti Starbucks I picked up on the way in because truthfully who knows where my mug went. And, I like their Tazo tea.
This package is more than $2.39. It’s comfort, it’s identity (oh, the options to choose from! I’d like a “tall extra-hot americano, please” an actual reply from a baristo “I’ll let you know when he walks in the door!”) , and most importantly it’s ease.
In looking over the aformentioned list, I subscribe to many of these. Why? The answer to that is simple. Why not? It’s not a matter being unable to handle the day-to-day minutiae anymore. I’m buying convenience.
It makes me wonder what kind of shift is happening here on a socioeconomic level. As we place a higher value on the reliance of services, will we place a higher premium on the service-based industries? Will we start to see higher end and/or gourmet services with higher premiums?
What does this say about the way we work, and live?
Part 7: The Messages We Receive
Jul 16th
Imagine if each message in your inbox was an actual letter. Imagine, opening each letter and reading the pages every morning, during the course of the day – filing away some, sending on others.
How many of us get hundreds of e-mails a day? Can you imagine sorting through some one-hundred odd letters every day and night? No wonder we get bogged down.
The other evening I found myself perusing various feeds in Google reader. I also had two email programs open (work and personal). I was running iChat, Yahoo IM, G-mail chat, and Tweetie. Oh, and I was texting from my iPhone.
This common situation is infinite, part of a lifestyle that defines the ultimate interactive experience – the one we speculated about years ago while learning Microsoft Front Page and building interactive CD-ROM’s.
The baseline 1′s and 0′s of a 2-dimensional social destiny in the making.
Here within the Digital Age, the way we read is changing. We absorb information from various mediums creating a non-linear path of focus. Perhaps due to the multitude of interactive media available to us, we’re brief in how we consume content. We sample and browse, allowing the inevitable multi-tasking to occur.
It can be said that cumulatively, we’re actually reading more than ever.
So I’m wondering – does this new process, this newly adapted way of working through multitasking – affect the quality of our interpersonal communications? And what are the long-term effects of this?
Do we communicate in shorter amounts – but with more folks, in higher frequencies?
The interactive experience is rich. We have the real-time aspect of Twitter, the private element of chat. The social aspect of Facebook. Time delayed emails, character counts, garbled texts sent on-the-go.
It’s easier to reach folks more than ever. But is it confusing? Is it too much? Or is being networked 24/7 merely a lesson in brevity?
On a business level, this may not be a bad thing. We can cut to the chase.
But what about on a personal level? Where in time and space does all of this communication add up?
I wonder if it makes our relationships fluid and transparent – like with the prevalence of social networking we have the ability to see everyone’s business. Or, if it creates more obstacles through illusions of what we choose to share.
And, how can we get to know someone if we never slow down?
Maybe we need to slow down in general and become more present when we multi-task. We can take the time to stop and chat with someone in person. We can stop needle dropping and enjoy an entire song or album. We can put 5 more minutes into that email.
Maybe we need to appreciate…Life. Or we may wake up one day with nothing but a bunch of intangible 1′s and 0′s.
Reads:
Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social – http://nyti.ms/c1P81A
Deep Dive – Nu Drum & Bass
Jul 4th
I’ve been re-visiting a lot of drum & bass lately. I totally forgot how amazing the sound is, and how it’s created new sub-genres over the years by adopting other styles like jazz, hip-hop, and techno – while also carving a path for semi-new genres like dubstep. So great!
Here’s a quick mix of some new tracks I’ve been digging lately. It goes deep and rides a rollercoaster of quiet footprints to full-on rinse. Enjoy!
//tracklist
Fever Ray “Keep The Streets (MaJiKer’s BPM Remix)”
Altimeter “Vee”
Mala “Alicia”
Body Language “Work This City (Shuttle Remix)”
Lenzman, Riya “Open Page”
Oliver Ferrer & Giorgio LIVE “Soul Mountain”
Netsky “Iron Heart”
Underworld “Scribble (Netsky Remix)”
Pendulum “Set Me On Fire”
Tinie Tempah “Pass Out (Snoop Dogg Remix)”
Twenty Two and a Few (Part 1)
Jul 3rd
I wake up to the sound of ringing. It could have been the ringing of my ears as a result of last nights party but it’s louder and of course it’s my phone and of course I have no idea why it’s under my pillow. Oh, cell phones: cryptic tools harboring text messages in Shakespearean lingo like LOL and WTF, blurry photographs of bands I don’t care about, and phone numbers for people like “BurningMan”, Bob Closetalker”, “Jody Stylist?” and “Ryan #4″.
I find a pair of jeans on the floor and crawl into them while darting my half-open eyes around in search of a clean T-shirt. I don’t know why I always look on the floor for clean clothes, a social reflex that only Saturday mornings can provoke.
Put my contact lenses in, do the robotical AM washup.
Saturday morning traffic is great. I sip coffee from behind over-sized sunglasses and pretend to listen to NPR when really in my head I’m rehashing the sociopolitical interactions between acquaintances of the previous evening.
I roll into a parking spot and put all the change I can dig up into the meter. It amounts to 29 minutes total as I conveniently forget that I’ll be there over an hour. “At least it’s not raining”, I irrationally think instead.
My acupuncturist knows I’ve been up late. I can see it at the corner of his smile. I’ve been visiting him since January, in staying consistent with my absolutely inconsistent lifestyle. I wonder when the Friday night pass expires in life – when is it unacceptable to be out until 4:30 am? Perhaps until the wrinkles become faintly apparent in mid-morning to late afternoon light? You know, the light that makes you think to yourself “Wow, times are tough” no matter how much sleep you’ve gotten the night before.
After the session, I leave the office and take a walk down the street. The sunshine is always perpetual in Beverly Hills. It’s like those gaslamps on Beacon Hill in downtown Boston that that never go out. The never-ending light of the affluent.
There are nail salons everywhere and the sun is shining and I feel the post-acupuncture haze combined with my Midwestern consumerist upbringing lure me into a salon. I chose the brightest pink color I can find.
I consider the nail technicians to be a cheap alternative to having an actual therapist. I sit and we talk, or I talk, lamenting about my job, relationships, social scenes. I complain and the woman tells me to be patient and as I glance at my nails as they seem dry but then realize she’s talking about life.
I slightly feel the three pins sticking out of the top of my head leftover from the acupuncture session. I realize the woman with the two toned sunglasses coated in gold jewelry waiting in an armchair for a pedicure is trying not to stare at them. I look back at her and we both smile, silently acknowledging each other’s crazy.
I have an hour to get to the gym prior to meeting the gang at Saddleranch for brunch. Brunch is a loose term for any meal happening before six. This only makes sense because in a town like LA, the traffic is so bad that you can only really make time to do one or two things during the day. Unless of course it’s a holiday in which case the roads are yours for the taking. “Today”, I’ll announce as I walk to my car, “I’m going to the bank.”
If I’m lucky, I’ll make it to Starbucks where I’ll inadvertently wait another twenty minutes for a latte, because let’s face it, everyone in this town is on Venice Standard Time.
This is Part 1 of a series. “22 and a Few: Life as a 20-something in LA”
The first HTML5 album, from Francis and the Lights
Jun 30th
Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette is back with a design created specifically to play on the iPhone 4 and iPad. This is a great workaround as both operating systems notoriously don’t stream Flash. You can listen to the full album, embed it, and download tracks directly from iTunes all while multitasking (a new feature for the iPhone). Pretty cool!
