BATHS – NEW LP ‘OBSIDIAN’ RELEASED ON ANTICON ON 27TH MAY; STREAM ‘MIASMA SKY’ NOW

Three years ago, Baths dropped his startlingly beautiful debut, ‘Cerulean’. Released on Anticon, the record blurred the line between post-modern pop and the LA beat scene with devastating emotional clarity. Its tone was as celestial as its album title, taken from a shade of blue typically used to describe the sky. When he returned home in July of 2011 to record the follow-up, he was bedridden for months because of the E. Coli bacterial virus, barely able to digest solid food and bereft of creative energy.

‘Obsidian’ understandably has these scars etched into its imprint. The first song is called “Worsening,” subsequent cuts include ‘Ossuary’, ‘No Past Lives’ and ‘Earth Death’. While the mood is often bleak, it’s never bloated. ‘Miasma Sky’, the first track to surface online, balances being “swallowed alive by the sky” with a gorgeous piano groove and levitative croon that could detonate a disco club night. The album is unusually cohesive, suffused with heavenly choirs, head-nodding percussion, erotic lyrics, and wry humor.

“The songs and lyrics all came out of a pretty fucked and arduous process of trial and error,” Baths says. ”But I hope people understand that I’m not the depressed, suicidal, and death-obsessed person the record may paint me as being. These are just darker areas that I wanted to explore”. The areas of exploration include reading and research into the Dark Ages and the black plague, different versions of Hell as spied through Dante’s Inferno, the Bible, and old world illuminated manuscripts and paintings. These noirish fascinations met the virtuosic chops of a 24-year old who has been playing piano for 20 years.

BATHS ‘OBSIDIAN’ TRACKLISTING:
1. Worsening
2. Miasma Sky  (listen below)
3. Ironworks
4. Ossuary
5. Incompatible
6. No Eyes
7. Phaedra
8. No Past Lives
9. Earth Death
10. Inter