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Will Wiesenfeld is Baths - LA's big new electronica musician
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BATHS, Photo by Hanna Dryland Shapiro
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One of the nation’s hottest electronic music venues is in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. It’s called the Low End Theory and it happens Wednesday nights at a bar called the Airliner. Tonight, a young musician called Baths will take the mic.
Music writer Chris Martins told KPCC's Alex Cohen more about this artist who’s generated a lot of buzz.
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Listen to Baths' track "Hall."
Baths is 21-year-old Will Wiesenfeld who grew up in the San Fernando Valley. At age four, he insisted that his parent enroll him in music lessons. By 13, he'd started recording his own music using a Digital Performer and a MIDI keyboard.
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Will later got turned on to the music of Bjork and that changed his musical direction completely. Martins says he went on to teach himself viola, contra bass and guitar, building up his musical arsenal.
Now, his sound has multiple layers, using everything from pen clicks to the sound of running water.
"It is dense," Martins says, "but when you listen to it, it's bright and airy... There's songs where he's crooning like Prince."
Baths has been doing a residency this month at the Low End Theory — a venue that has become one of the most respected for electronica music on the planet. Martins says he was able to chat with Baths before his first gig there.
"He was a big ball of nerves," Martins says, "he kept talking about how he was too young for all this." But in the end, he adds, Baths got his nerves under control and was a smashing success.
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