Kevin Bronson on July 6th, 2010

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[Woefully behind on reviewing local releases, but here are two that are out today. Catch-up to come later this week:]

Baths, “Cerulean” (Anticon) – The debut album from 21-year-old wunderkind Will Wiesenfeld, already anointed the newest star of (the Weekly-coined) L.A. beat-music scene, feels like a classical composer’s take on modern electro. If chillwave digitizes shoegaze and soul to the point of claustrophobia, Wiesenfield’s warm beats, fuzzed-out melodies and wide-eyed vocals radiate a warmth worthy of the album’s sky-blue title. Like the way some of Morr Music’s artists use their samples as accelerants to their melodies, “Cerulean’s” tender, choral vistas are rarely obscured by their glitchy architecture. Recommended.

||| Download: via Pitchfork, “Maximalist,” and, via Stereogum, “Hall” (The One AM Radio Remix featuring the Los Feliz Ladies Choir)

Fol Chen, “Part II: the New December” (Asthmatic Kitty) – The sophomore album from the L.A. melancholics who introduced you to “John Shade” two years ago comes off as another exercise in pop vivisection, but its maddeningly cut-and-paste aesthetic does occasionally liberate the listener from its sonic Escher. The ingredients – shards of guitar and keyboards, tinkling keys, sad horns, syncopated beats, extraneous effects and bedroom vocals – reveal songwriters either dead set on being the coolest experimentalists on their Highland Park block, or ones who distrust their own songcraft. The catchy “In Ruins” and the dreamy “The New December,” for two, indicate they should.

||| Download: “The Holograms” (via Stereogum) and “In Ruins” (previously posted)

||| Live: Fol Chen celebrates its album release tonight at the Echo, with Baths playing the late set.