Taking a break from live set practice for his upcoming world tour, Will Wiesenfeld—better known as the musician Baths—talks me through the closer to his upcoming album Gut. “Having to tell yourself that the most beautiful thing in the world is something I can never have…it’s really painful.” The track, “Sound of a Blooming Flower,” takes inspiration from a Vespertine-era Björk interview, where the Icelandic legend laments being unable to record the sound of a flower actively in bloom. Beginning with a soft piano amid the pitter-patter of rain, Wiesenfeld mimics the emotional journey from infatuation to painful acceptance that occurs when you chase the unattainable. As the realization sets in, the track crescendos into a crash of drums and glitching soundscapes: “I love an album that ends loud as fuck,” Wiesenfeld cheekily notes.
Gut is a turning point in the career of Wiesenfeld, whose musical exploits have spanned over a decade and reached from coming up within the Low End Theory community to producing for the beloved Netflix animation Bee and PuppyCat. His last full-length album under the Baths moniker was 2017’s Romaplasm, released by the since-dissolved indie label Anticon. This time around, the LA native will be self-releasing, with Gut dropping via his personal label Basement’s Basement. The record is quintessentially Baths, with bubbly electropop abounding as Wiesenfeld explores his sexual cravings and lets his stomach drive the music.
With Gut dropping this week, we caught up with Wiesenfeld to hear more about writing from the stomach, the dichotomy of relationships and sex, and how he gets “hotter and weirder” with every release.
Talk me through this conception of “stomach music.”
The philosophical impetus of the record is this idea of trying to write music from the stomach versus the heart, meaning that it’s all about impulse. Base and boorish by design—that was kind of my little phrase for it. Your stomach dictating how you do things, almost the same way somebody would talk about your dick thinking before your brain does. Whatever I’m writing about is by design and, with intent, grosser and rougher around the edges. It’s more brutal. Some of the songs are super, super mean, because that was a reflection of what I’m feeling. I don’t need to have it colored in such a way that I’m not saying the thing that I actually feel. Of course, there’s still mild poeticism and ornamentation and whatever the fuck it is that I do as a musician, but the philosophy and the starting point was that.
The sonic and aesthetic zeal of the record comes from music that makes me think of that. The word I use all the time is “relentless”: music that’s confident enough to repeat an idea so intensely that it drills itself into your brain, whether that’s a feeling, an atmosphere, or a melody. It’s often more about sound design and pressure. I was getting a lot of that out of noise rock stuff—Gilla Band was one of the biggest influences. That feeling of driving an emotion home that isn’t comfortable or good, but it’s impossible not to feel it just from the nature of the music—that’s what I became obsessed with. I’ve made music that I think is intentionally less obvious, a lot of obfuscation where you’re not exactly sure what the emotion is and it’s harder to pin down. I think this is more direct. It’s still me and all my bullshit, fractal interests of a million different things, but it has these starting points of workflow that were very effective for me.
“I don’t think records serve to change me. They serve to bracket the way that I am and the things that I’m super passionate about in that period of time.”
Has Gut changed your relationship with sex and sexuality?
I don’t think the record itself changed them, but it was more like I was putting all those thoughts on a blackboard for the first time so I could step back and look at them. I wasn’t seeing it as a fully interlocked concept—that spread of ideas that are interconnected. It was just sort of taking stock, like a bookmark or a chapter of my life. I finished this record a while ago, like 2022, so even now I’m different than I was right at that time. I continue to change, and I don’t think records—when I’ve made them in any capacity—serve to change me. They serve to bracket the way that I am and the things that I’m super passionate about in that period of time.
At the time I was making this record, especially with the age I was coming to and how I felt about my life in general, the obsession with sex got to me in a way that it hadn’t earlier in life. I thought I was still just playful and having a really good time, but the weight of it was more present than ever. So I started writing about that and feeling those things deeper and wanting to explore them more.
How does the weight of the “ideal relationship” dance with the sex and the lust in Gut?
It’s one of those things that, in my head, I always saw as separate. The ideal relationship was something that could happen at any time, outside of the all-over-the-place sex life that I have. So much of the way I write about sex is the back-and-forth of that, where sometimes I feel so actualized and human when I’m deeply entrenched in wild sexual escapades—that’s what “Eden” is. Then there are other times where I’m completely deflated. That’s kind of what “Chaos” is, where I just have no connection to that ideal at all.
The craziest irony in all of this is that in the past couple of weeks, I’ve sort of met somebody, which is so brand-new to me. I’ve literally never been in a relationship. I’m not exaggerating when I say that. Now, I’m also dealing with the possibility of something like that, coupled against doing all this press about the complete annihilation of the idea of a relationship ever happening. My brain is always moving in too many directions at once and I never know how to feel. So much of Gut is just, “I’m just going to say the things that I’m feeling as they’ve come to me.” Whether or not they stayed true, they were true when they were written.
“I’m tryna lean into attempting to be a hot person, but I can’t do that unless the shit I’m doing balances out in the opposite direction where I’m trying weirder and more off-putting music.”
There was a comment on your “Eden” music video: “The trend of him getting hotter and weirder with each release continues.” Do you agree with that assessment?
I’m so glad you brought that up. Four years ago, on the “Mikaela Corridor” video, top comment: “This guy gets hotter and weirder with every release LMAO.” So it’s literally a legacy comment where someone said basically the same thing again four years later. I remembered that comment from “Mikaela Corridor” and I was thrilled about it because that’s my entire fucking MO. I’m tryna be healthy and lean into attempting to be a hot person, but I can’t do that unless the shit I’m doing balances out in the opposite direction where I’m trying weirder and more off-putting music.
The other thing, too—the whole earlier part of my career I would get comments about my weight and stuff that was really off-color and made me feel a certain way. Partially because of that—but also just on my own journey of wanting sustainability in what I do, because touring is a beast and I wanted to be healthier—I got way more into exercise. So to have it reflected back to you in the exact way you want it—hotter and weirder—that’s my fucking thing! That is exactly how I want to be perceived, so it’s much more flattering.
You were sampled on Charli XCX’s “I Might Say Something Stupid” remix—were you surprised to find that out?
100 percent surprised. I had no fucking clue, because the sample was lifted from a Splice pack, which means it’s stuff that’s free reign for anybody that’s a member of Splice and uses those sample packs. The sample itself was unadulterated—they took it as it was and it plays for two seconds exactly how I made it. That was really thrilling that they were like, “Oh, that sound is cool enough to exist as it is.” To have had even a minutiae of an effect on what is probably going to be considered one of the most important pop records of the past 10 years, it’s crazy! FL
