Geotic's "Actually Smiling" Is Dance Music for a Night In

Published: January 24, 2017

It's been a minute since we've heard from Will Wiesenfeld, the LA songsmith behind Baths, but he's hardly been idle. Today, he returns as Geotic, the dance-oriented flip side to his electronic excavations as Baths. 

If the latter's expansive, often-surreal works offer escape, Geotic grounds its driving beats and rhythms in solitude. Take "Actually Smiling," the first single off of Geotic's forthcoming LP Abysma, the project's 12th output and first formal label release (past works were self-released on Bandcamp), marking a pulsing departure from its ambient inclinations. The song, which Noisey is premiering below, is more home than house party, kicking off with crackling drum beats and unfolding into warm synths and rhythmic interplays that are as visceral as they are complex. Wiesenfeld's distant vocal harmonies dip in an out of the track; it's hard to make out what he's saying, or if he's saying anything at all, but it's a comfort all the same, like someone's presence in another room on a quiet night. 

That concept is at the heart of Abysma, due out March 31 on Ghostly International, which Wiesenfeld both produced at home and crafted as a work to give the "finishing touches" to our personal spaces and moments of decompression. 

"So much of dance music is about partying and going out and having a really hardcore social experience," Wiesenfeld explains. "Dance music has never been that for me. So much of my experience listening to music is being by myself—at home or in my car."

Abysma marks Wiesenfeld's third full-length as Geotic and is separate from Geotic's Eon Isle project, a trilogy of albums sourced from single instruments and of which his first two albums were a part. He promises its third installment—an all-piano record—is still on the way, but in the meantime, Abysma does well to fill another kind of space. 

Listen to the premiere of Geotic's "Actually Smiling" and check out the album art and track listing for Abysma, which you can order here, below. 

Abysma Track Listing: 

1. Sunspell
2. Actually Smiling
3. Nav
4. Billionth Remnant
5. Laura Corporeal
6. Vaulted Ceiling, Painted Sky
7. Perish Song
8. Valiance 

Andrea Domanick is Noisey's West Coast Editor. Follow her on Twitter

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