Geotic on Bleep

Geotic

Label Biography:

Ask Will Wiesenfeld to contrast his project Baths with the music made under his Geotic alias, and you'll get a simple response: Baths is active listening, Geotic is passive listening. But behind this straightforward duality exists two projects that are equally poignant yet starkly distinct, reflective of the emotional complexities of its creator.

Don't mistake passive listening for anything remotely resembling apathy. Over the course of nine self-released albums plus a handful of singles & EPs (all released on Bandcamp), Wiesenfeld has certainly proved the contrary. In 2017, he solidified this notion with Abysma, his first release for Ghostly International and the Geotic project's first ever physical offering.

Part of Wiesenfeld's inspiration for Abysma came from his own domestic situation. A native of the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, the classically trained musician lives on the Westside, inhabiting an apartment a short ride from the ocean. "It's a relaxing and slightly displaced vibe that informs the project. It's full of art everywhere, all my comics, an amazing media set up," he says. With that environment in mind, he designed dance music for at-home listening, replete with a quiet beauty and private communion that can rival anything made to command the totality of your attention span.

Wiesenfeld followed-up Abysma with Traversa, released in the fall of 2018. The sonic transition between the two records is seamless yet the desired destinations are worlds apart. Traversa is as an eight-song atlas featuring propulsive suites of startling beauty, each summoning a different geographic locale, memory, and mood.

“The whole inspiration of this record is borne of that feeling when travel is good and you can let your brain go where it wants to,” says Wiesenfeld. There's a sense of liberation in the soft motion of Traversa, affirmed by the increased presence of Wiesenfeld's delicate vocals in the mix. Taken as a set, the album serves as a temporary nepenthe, a refined antidote amidst the swirling chaos of the outside world, a northwest passage offering ephemeral freedom and momentum.

“The magic of music is that it allows you to remember when you were a certain age or had some personal connection,” Wiesenfeld says. “But for me, it’s always an even split between that and when I was into a particular anime or a certain band, or when I was touring. I’m always trying to communicate that feeling of taking you to a different place through music.”

Fittingly, Wiesenfeld introduced the first Geotic live set in October 2018, debuting the show in Tokyo, Japan.