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Anticon | anticon.bandcamp.com |
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Romaplasm was ranked sixth in my Top Ten Albums I Wrote About in 2018 list, and was awarded the Sootopolis City Rain Badge for Most Abrupt Reversal of Fortune
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The spectre of death loomed dark and low over Baths’ last album. While on the outside Obsidian glistered, within, putrid fingers grasped, lurking in the corner of the eye, peeling open bitter resentments, contaminating in turns with knots of stifling disgust (“First boyfriend / You live in my house and we share a toilet seat”) and spurts of frigid indifference (“And it is not a matter of if you mean it / It is only a matter of come and fuck me”).
So on the whole, not a super cheery album.
And though he has since recuperated, the misery has spread. What was wrought upon the bowels of Will Wiesenfeld by a crippling yearlong struggle against E. coli has now metastasised to the entire western hemisphere.
It seems that one album hewn from suffering and suffocation is quite enough. And besides, Will has tapped into something far more infectious: his own dorky, breathless romanticism. He has plunged headlong into the pure, crystal-clean waters of fiction — Romaplasm is a liquid refuge, a lucid daydream of delirious, fantastical worlds and the cute boys who reside there.
Will likes to reconstruct rather than build. He dumps the contents of his digital toolbox over the workshop floor and crouches there among the shattered splinters, in shorts and scuffed boots and a rubber apron, sifting through the debris for exactly the right piece, lost in his own boundless imagination. He’s a kid playing with his Lego, but bigger, and also wielding an acetylene torch and some sweet goggles. He solders together individual needles and shards into sparking, stimulating spikes of glitchy electronica (heavily indebted to such acupuncturists as Matmos and Aphex Twin) and then runs off to find you, to share them with you, seeking your approval, holding them out with sooty-faced toothy-grinned delight.
Pop one in your mouth. They’re delicious — antiseptic-fresh and spearmint-sharp.
Maybe your favourite is ‘Yeoman,’ wherein Will gleefully chases his ruffle-sleeved paramour through the ballrooms of their airship — “Flail me out onto the false dancefloor / Take my face and show me what for”. Perhaps ‘Abscond’ is more your cup of tea, wherein Will seduces a bashful young prince down from his ivory tower to elope on horseback — “Get used to the wrongs I’m going to do for you / Get used to the wrongs I’m going to do to you when you ask / Your move”. Or you may prefer latter-album highlight ‘Out,’ wherein Will embarks on a hyperreal whirl through the craziest most bangingest rave — “Walls lined in every colour of every iris of every lover”.
“Come fail at love,” tempts he with a jerk of the head and an indelicate waggle of the brows, “Let’s celebrate your stupid face”.
You may have remarked upon the recurring motif of Will being a shameless flirt, to vagabonds and royalty alike. Whatever developments unfolded with the deuteragonist of Obsidian seem to have left him with an insatiable appetite, and even when Romaplasm’s dreamworld slips into a nightmare — “Become as fire / Eat the woods / Eat the dark / And show where I stood” — the sombreness feels constructive, cleansing even, especially insofar as Will’s newfound penchant to spill his desires directly from his open mouth — “But if his wristwatch finds your cheekbone / And his schedule is free / I let the fulcrum buckle under me”.
It’s especially endearing how, even in the throes of abject logorrhea, he still needs to dance around his emotions, leafing fervidly through a dog-eared thesaurus. In many ways he is the converse of Owl City’s Adam Young. While both share similar stylistic predilections, not to mention entrancing, childlike wonderment, Adam’s saccharine music is saturated in overbearing sincerity.
Both leave an overpowering aftertaste long after the offering has slipped down the throat. The highly processed, caramel-smooth vocals of Owl City tend to stick in the teeth, in a way that some enjoy (myself included — ‘Fireflies’ remains a certified bop, and I am still wicked disgruntled that The Midsummer Station never received the attention it so badly deserved) and that others find singularly off-putting. There is more texture to Will’s voice, a mouthwash that strips and cleans and purifies without bloating or filling, an instrument that quivers uncertainly, as though he is not entirely unconvinced that what he is seeing is real. It slumps roughly into bleary dawnlit croaks and soars high into moonbound falsetto with equal ease, coyly refusing to commit to either. Uncertainty only draws the listener deeper into Will’s delirium. Whether awake or asleep, he continues to dream.
But not forever. The creeping tendrils of reality sneak into the edges as Romaplasm bows out with its best track. For Will’s final bae is the very Earth on which we stand (or sit or recline), to cherish and to hold, to protect and to love.
“Broadback /
Of course you’re strong, and all that /
But what hope am I should you collapse? /
Should they bludgeon your redwood thighs?”
With a wild rush of serotonin, shifting stately stabs resolve into crystalline blades.
“Bravery and dauntlessness speak volumes less than caution /
I won’t be left alone with all your clothes and no reason to wash them"
And as the sickest dance beat explodes Will into a thousand mirrored fragments, he screams to the heavens his thesis, his manifesto:
“I don’t want you to die”
It is a euphoric proclamation of victory. He has smashed his obsidian to smithereens, and is finally ready for what the waking world has in store for him next.
Will Wiesenfeld is enraptured. A sunbeam shines directly onto his face, illuminating eyes dilated in wonder, but all he can see is the owner of that large, gentle hand caressing his cheek. Something to focus on, something to believe in, something to live for.
And should you too need a push in the right direction, the kaleidoscope megaclub from ‘Out’ has a proposition:
“Will I let the salt flow from my eyes or my armpits?”