SOUNDTRACK: BATHS-Tiny Desk Concert 300 (September 4, 2013).
I was unfamiliar with Baths and I am impressed by their busy-ness in this set. There are only two guys playing, both play with various computer gadgets and then switch to keyboards and guitars. They layer more and more music on this fairly dancey and very electronic sound.
Baths, a.k.a. Will Wiesenfeld, plays mysterious and textured electronic music. When Wiesenfeld came to the Tiny Desk, I expected contemplative tones and a laid-back performance; he does, after all, call his project Baths. But what sets him apart from the vast majority of like-minded performers is that his music doesn’t get buried behind the buttons or lost in a hypnotic glaze.
Wiesenfeld is an extrovert live, and at the Tiny Desk, he sounds vibrant and compelling as he performs songs from this year’s Obsidian. His partner Morgan Greenwood, an accomplished music-maker in his own right, keeps the music dense but frees up Wiesenfeld to sing with few distractions; there’s a mind-meld between the two that’s undeniable. They’re not accustomed to playing in the light of day, but they enchant in this perfect introduction to their work.
Wisenfeld’s vocals are a lot of wordless sounds (ba ba ba, na na na) that get looped and mixed around. He sings in a rather high register, especially when making the looped sounds.
“Miasma Sky” builds with layers upon layers of sounds and vocals. The sounds are manipulated in great ways with those little knobs and sliders. And just as you think it’s going to end with a series of delicate synth and guitar notes, he begins looping them which create the building blocks for the rest of the song. It’s primarily keyboards and glitchy drums until the end.
“Phaedra” begins with some heavy drums and them playing around with all their gadgets. This is a fast, pumping, dancing song. Greenwood sings backing vocals in an equally high register.
“Ocean Death” has deep thumping drums and an opening with lots of na na nas and la la las in a textually rich soundscape. It all fades down o just drums before building back up again.
[READ: July 9, 2016] Ruins
Seven years ago I read a book called Diario de Oaxaca, a sketchbook by Peter Kuper that I really enjoyed. When I grabbed this book of the shelf the other day I didn’t realize it was the same guy. But I can see that that sketchbook informed this excellent graphic novel.
The Diario covered his two-year stay in Oaxaca where he drew a lot, studied insects (and saw the monarch butterflies) and experienced both chaos and contentment.
This fictionalized account of the story places two characters into a situation that sounds similar to what he experienced, but with enough difference to keep it purely fictional.
The book opens with a monarch butterfly emerging from its cocoon and taking flight across Rte 87. It flies past a city where we zoom in and focus on a hospital room where a woman gives birth to… a book? This is the first of several convergences that is brilliantly set up in this opening sequence.
This story concerns monarch butterflies, a woman’s inability to finish her book and her husband’s lack of desire to have a child.
George was recently laid off from the Met and Samantha feels held back in the city. They decide to go to Oaxaca to get away from things and take a sabbatical.
Samantha had an adventure there as a child, but it’s all new to George.
George is a pretty crabby guy. Right from the get go he’s critical of Manhattan and then of the airport and then of flying (he can’t see the monarch flying parallel to his plane for a few minutes).
The scenes with the monarch in flight are really stunning, with the color palate mostly gray and blue except for the bright monarch. And we see the butterfly fly through towns and cities and farms–none of which are particularly inviting or nice–showing this amazing creature’s journey through everything that is not natural.
Mexico proves to be quite the culture shock for George. They have rented an apartment for a year and the owner is in a hurry to get out since her flight is also leaving shortly–you know, Mexicans–so George and Samantha are left alone in this amazing place with their super-nice housekeeper Angelina. The place is great and relaxing and Samantha hopes that George will be able to get back to painting while she writes her book
But happiness is short-lived because evidently there are fireworks every night and feral dogs around every corner, not to mention sismos pequeno (little earthquakes).
But George is pretty happy–there are insects everywhere and he is spending most of time taking pictures of them. Samantha is also happy to be back to Oaxaca. We learn a little later that she spent quite a lot of time there as a young adult. Few things have changed and the murals are gorgeous. And while she’s looking around she meets one of the mural artists. And he is quite the charmer.
Then we see Samantha’s book in progress. She is comparing the ancient Mexican rituals with her current situation. This works as a great history of the area as well as great back story to her. And the illustrations in this section are very different from the rest–a cool ancient Mexican style.
They also make some friends. George meets a bookstore owner named Alejandro, a former photojournalist who has retired to Oaxaca and hopes to drink himself to death.
Alejandro tells them about the teachers’ strike that is going on–an annual event which this year has turned violent because President Ulises sent in militia to break up the demonstrations. George and Al encourage each other to document the strike and the viciousness of the government–George with his pencils and Al with his camera. But gringos documenting things can only lead to trouble. In fact one day while George and Sam are walking around they get in the middle of a skirmish with tanks and tear gas.
They decide to go on a mini-vacation to a beach resort that she recalled fondly, but George is instantly grabbed by the undertow and is shocked at how no one was there to save him–it was up to Samantha’s quick thinking that he didn’t drown.
There’s a magical moment when they go to Michoacan to see the thousands of butterflies.
But the question is can a magical trip to Oaxaca save a relationship that is in trouble?
I Just Read About That... 
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