Binghamton Underground Music Presents (BUMP) will host its first virtual concert on Feb. 19 with Baths and Fire-Toolz. The electro and experimental acts will perform on a YouTube livestream that students can RSVP to through the Student Association Programming Board’s (SAPB) Instagram page.
Sean McManus, BUMP chair and a junior majoring in Japanese studies, wrote in an email that the virtual show will represent many firsts for BUMP.
“Obviously [COVID-19] has made in-person live concerts not possible, and for BUMP’s first online show I wanted to bring acts from genres that we haven’t seen much of in BUMP’s history,” McManus wrote. “The intense experimental genre-bending Fire-Toolz is an act unlike anything else that we’ve had and we have not had an electronic act like Baths since Yaeji performed in the [University] Undergrounds some time ago.”
Baths is the stage name for Will Wiesenfeld, an American electronic musician from Los Angeles who has been making music since 2007. Since then, he has released three albums with the independent record label Anticon. Bath’s debut album, “Cerulean,” which he recorded within two months in his bedroom, was included in Pitchfork’s 2010 “Album of the Year: Honorable Mention” list and his second album, “Obsidian,” peaked at no. 16 on Billboard’s top dance/electronic albums chart in June 2013. He has also released music in side projects under the name Geotic and has named his albums after different minerals. Baths’ latest compilation, “Pop Music/False B-Sides II,” was released in May 2020 as a sequel to a 2011 compilation and consists of unreleased tracks from as far back as 2013.
Angel Marcloid, an experimental musician from Chicago who goes by the stage name Fire-Toolz, has released three albums and multiple compilations through Bandcamp since 2015, with her latest being “Rainbow Bridge” in May 2020. Pitchfork praised “Rainbow Bridge” for its stylistic changes from Fire-Toolz’s past work, saying it had “a strange balance, but it’s true to the spirit of the Fire-Toolz project as a whole, which is full of pieces that feel like they’re being torn apart as Marcloid’s impulses go galloping off in different directions.”
According to Max Allison, who co-runs Angel Hair Audio with Marcloid, described the music she releases as Fire-Toolz by saying it “serves as a home for the most dense and combinatory experiments, all of which approach the domain of collage-like electronic production.”
The BUMP show will be a free event, but students must RSVP for the event through a Google form to access it. The concert will start at 8 p.m. on Feb. 19 on YouTube Live. McManus wrote that he hopes the show will help students de-stress this semester.
“I’m a huge fan of both of these acts so I’m very excited to bring both of them to the student population,” McManus wrote in an email. “My hope is that with thoughts and fears of [COVID-19] all around people will be able to stay safe indoors but still have a great time listening to some music!”