It's becoming common for hazy electro-pop artists to have an ambient side project, which makes sense. The music is about vibe and feel, after all, so it has to be tempting to ditch the songs altogether and dive all the way into atmosphere. But while there's a lot of music in this vein being made, much of it seems interchangeable. So it's natural to approach Geotic, a side project of Will Wiesenfeld from BATHS, with a certain amount of skepticism. But there's more going on here than just a break from songwriting.
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Mend is Wiesenfeld's fifth album as Geotic, a project he's been returning to since 2008. There are a few non-musical elements that might make it seem tossed-off-- its unveiling via an ANGELFIRE page, the fact that it was recorded in four days total, just after this past Christmas. But the record itself is more than just half-formed ephemera. Most of Mend was recorded on electric guitar, an instrument that didn't feature heavily on Baths' breakout debut LP, last year's Cerulean. Wiesenfeld's recent Daytrotter session demonstrated his skill on piano and his ear for deconstructing his own material, and Mend offers further revelations in the form of his guitar playing. Throughout, gently picked patterns skip across webs of static tone, all of which is swathed in amniotic fuzz. There's a bit of sleepiness here and there, particularly on the loping "Beaming Husband", but this is otherwise quite physical music for an ambient album. You can hear the bent notes and fingers sliding along the fretboard on opener "Unwind", and there is real movement on the lightly galloping highlight "And Upon Awakening". Mend ultimately feels organic and human, more about people than machines.
Which makes sense, since the bloops and warped samples of Cerulean were always in service of exploring emotion (the guy titled a song "♥"). A quick scan through Mend's tracklist ("Find Your Peace", "Sleep and We'll Transition", "I'll Have Come and Gone With You") reveals that those preoccupations are still very much present. There are no lofty themes or overwrought sentiments here, though. Instead, Mend's melodies are gently simple, carrying enough heft to stick to your brain without becoming syrupy. For most bedroom artists, that'd be a triumph; for Wiesenfeld, it's something he did over the holidays, another bend in an increasingly compelling career path. [Larry Fitzmaurice, January 2011]
