Dosh/El Ten Eleven 9/16 Cambridge MA

the middle east - club in cambridge

Hello anonymous CC readers! seriously, if you read this blog start commenting on our shit. make us feel good.

Last night I went down to Cambridge [I live in Boston now... COLLEGE] to see Baths open for Dosh and El Ten Eleven as part of an Anticon tour. Now, Dosh and El Ten Eleven were two groups I had never heard of... I was pretty much lured by my love for Will Wisenfeld (previous posts) and hoped to see him play. Even though I actually MISSED Baths' set (no one I was with knew they needed ID.. we had to go BACK to school and then return to the club seen above) I made it for the other two acts, which were simply amazing. I'll start with Dosh.

Dosh.

The premise of both Dosh and El Ten Eleven as acts is the use of sampling and effects pedals to complicate their music. Dosh is a one man act, although on stage he pretty much lives in a tightly packed circle that contains a drum set, two keyboards and a large mixer/sampler behind him plus lots of other things to augment his music. The effect is amazing. Dosh samples himself playing and loops whatever he just did using the many many different looping pedals scattered around his setup. In one song, he actually sampled his own voice, making a 'ch' sound with his teeth, and then looping that for the duration of the song while he built upon it with interesting synth lines, live drum beats and various other things. What he essentially creates is a beautiful wave of sound that sits in the room, letting you listen for all the different little loops that he drops in and out. Besides the complexity of the music, its amazing to watch him scramble around his setup jumping from one instrument to the next, watching his feet making calculated decisions about his looping and wondering about exactly what it is that he is doing up there. It truly is a live performance, even though he isn't physically producing all the sounds you can hear at the time you hear him. I highly recommend his album Wolves and Wishes, and he has a new album this year (Tommy) that I haven't listened to yet. Although I don't feel the recordings do justice to the complicated/interesting nature of his live sets, when you listen and remember that its just one guy doing everything, its amazing.

El Ten Eleven

El Ten Eleven were the headliners at the show, and like i said, were based on a similar concept to Dosh's. However El Ten Eleven is a two-man setup, one guitarist (on the left above) alternating between a double-necked guitar and a bass, and a drummer alternating between drum set and electric drum kit. The magic (besides the double-necked guitar) happens with all the pedals they use, for looping and a tremendous amount of effects. They have a fisheye camera set up above the pedals projecting behind them, so you can see what they are doing, and it makes an awesome backdrop. As you can probably guess, they are more rock-bent than Dosh, but they have two things in common: Pedals and Anticon. Anyway, they are very inventive and have excellent stage presence. They have a new album coming out (which they were presaling at the concert.. have yet to listen to it) which is called Its Still Like A Secret. Give 'em a listen below

PEACE sorry it took so long to get this post up

Here are some song samples:

Naoise by dosh

El Ten Eleven - Hot Cakes by El Ten Eleven

El Ten Eleven - I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool by El Ten Eleven

///patkins///

Review: Baths - "Cerulean"

Well, this is it. Finally got the whole Baths album, after streaming it for a week on the internet (if you feel like previewing it before purchasing, I highly recommend that link). I only briefly mentioned him earlier, in my post on Shlohmo's latest EP, but Baths is, in my opinion, one of the most inspiring producers I've heard in a while.

Baths is Will Wisenfield. He lives in Chatsworth, and makes music on his laptop, though he also plays a ton of instruments (lots of guitar and piano on the album). After making a lot of music (that I will eventually listen to) under the monikers [Post-foetus] and Geotic, he was invited to play at a beat music show by none other than Alfred Darlington, aka Daedelus. That night inspired him to take his music in a new direction. That direction was Baths, and the result was Cerulean, which came out on the Anticon label July 6th.

Earlier, in my post on LandLord, I expressed my sentiments that the experimental beat music movement + good songwriting/lyrics makes me happy about the future of music. Well, it holds true here. When I saw him live last week, I congratulated him after the show for making the music I wish I could be making right now. Because when you take the left-field, post-Dilla beats of FlyLo (among others), suffuse them with the chillwave atmospherics of Toro y Moi (among others), and add the songwriting and vocal sound of Passion Pit (the dude is a dead ringer for Michael Angelakos), you get three of my favorite styles all wrapped up into one. And that makes me a happy lobster.

~ ~ ~

On to the album. "Apologetic Shoulder Blades" opens it all up with a heavenly falsetto chorale, making you think you're going to spend the rest of the next hour listening to Will's voice. And in a way, you are. But here's the thing. After a few seconds of pure layered vocal loveliness, in come the stuttering beats, which quickly grab the spotlight. To Wisenfield, the human voice is only one element in the mix. And for the rest of "Shoulder Blades," and many other tracks on the album, that's how he does: even when the song has lyrics. Baths harmonizes with himself, adds counterpoint over that, then slices the result to pieces, most notably on tracks like the off-kilter-but-still-badass "You're My Excuse to Travel" and the glitchy, almost Dntel-ish "Indoorsy." Those are both songs with actual lyrics and song structure, both of which take a backseat (but not too far back) to solid and innovative production, and frankly the result is AWESOME. Even instrumentals like "Maximalist" and "Aminals" have vocal elements or samples in them. Only real instrumental here is "Rafting Starlit Everglades," if you really care.

But that's not to say he's just a producer that happens to write. "♥" is a clear standout, melancholy but groovy at the same time, with wonderful shifts in mood both musically and lyrically. "Lovely Bloodflow" also does wonders with the beastly rhythms + awesome lyrics combo, though his falsetto goes a little too Prince-y for my taste on the first line of each verse. And "Plea," probably my favorite track on the album, is likewise a fantastic song. Defying conventional verse-chorus structure, it recycles one melodic unit, with lyrical themes that evolve with every reiteration. With an awesome beat to boot! Enjoy:

Plea - Baths


As one might expect, that one also killed live. Here's what I got from his Troubadour show July 3rd (Daedelus also played, expect an epic video post soon); excuse the sound, it was a still camera with surprisingly good video quality:


(gotta love the live manipulation, and the live vocals (!!), he definitely gets points for that.)

My other favorite is definitely "Rain Song" (too lazy to post, if you want it just buy the sucker). He goes into the production of that song, as well as the rest of the album, in this article.

Then of course there's the blogosphere favorite "Hall," with its cyclical chorus, glorious harmonies, and weird-as-hell-but-still-awesome tape-manipulating intro. Here's the Asura remix, I think it's fucking great, even if the beat lasts for only about a minute:

Hall (Asura Remix) - Baths


If I had to assign it a grade, I'd give it an A-, and that's only because I know this dude has the potential to improve even more, following a truly impressive debut. With too few weak points to complain about, Cerulean knocked me off my feet with its stronger ones, proving that experimentation and innovation are still alive and kicking in music production–and more importantly (to me at least) songwriting–today. BUY THIS, FOOLS!

at Anticon
or iTunes if you want it cheap and easy.

-el langosta

P.S. if you're new to the whole beat music scene, read this, courtesy of XLR8R.