Will Wiesenfeld loves anime, manga, video video games, cartoons—all media with the prospective to open up a fable global. The Southern California manufacturer regularly turns out to look his track the similar method, now not least on his 2017 Baths album Romaplasm, a definitive aggregate of his style for prime fable and his reward for gripping romantic and erotic narratives. If that file was once like some of the Ghibli or Pixar motion pictures Wiesenfeld holds pricey to his center, his releases underneath the extra prolific Geotic identify are like hardbound books of idea artwork, appearing the landscapes he’s able to conjuring earlier than he populates them together with his characters. His new Geotic album The Anchorite creates a small and delightful patch of woods inside this universe.
An anchorite is a spiritual recluse, and accordingly, Wiesenfeld creates an environment of sylvan solitude throughout those 12 tracks, preserving his vocals to a hushed and wordless murmur on the margins of the track. Within the foreground is an omnipresent box of static, which Wiesenfeld makes use of to not difficult to understand his track such a lot as to create a rugged and spiky texture; the crackles and pops succeed in out of the combo just like the greedy branches in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Electronics are deployed sparingly, and what few drums Wiesenfeld makes use of have a tendency to plod like thick workboots via dust. The main tools are electrical guitar, handled with results so it sounds just a little like Bibio’s, and piano, which Wiesenfeld sidechains on “The Picket of Corridors” so it kind of feels as though it’s being ate up via an avalanche. It sounds a bit bit like folks track, however now not rather.
The wood-hewn textures are essentially the most placing factor about The Anchorite, however as soon as it’s over, the melodies are what you’re in all probability to keep in mind. Wiesenfeld has a robust pop intuition, and “The Going” and “The Monastic Quiet” are lots catchy. The track hardly ever strays some distance from main keys, and it by no means hints at a lot thriller or threat, as an alternative who prefer to inhabit a spot of sure bet and peace—the point of view of the anchorite, in all probability, who has spent a very long time right here and sees it as a spot of shelter, now not secrets and techniques. Those that like their ambient moodier would possibly to find it a tad saccharine, however the ones at the identical wavelength of artists just like the Album Leaf, Eluvium, Ulrich Schnauss or Adam Younger’s Port Blue mission will to find greater than sufficient to revel in.
