Sunday, January 9, 2011

Bibio

Remember the old days, when your dad would take you down to the lake, sun shining, with the tackle and bait, you'd wait patiently until you caught a big one, then he'd show you how to gut a fish?  It doesn't matter if you have, Bibio's music is the aural equivalent.  It washes through you and into you, remind you of the old days, even if you never had them.


A bit of explanation, for those who aren't familiar with him: Bibio is an a British electronica artist out of Wolverhampton, and Warp Records puts out most of his music.  His music varies from album to to album, but for the most part, it's a strange brew of nostalgic folk rock by way of Boards Of Canada.  Although that seems to have changed.


Fi, his first album, with a few exceptions, is free of percussion, and is quiet and rather sad and experimental at times.  A lot of the tracks are driven by guitar tracks and flutes backed by would could be synth lines, with field records of things like wind and flowing water to augment them.  Hand Cranked sounds like it came out of a Wild West saloon at times, and while sounding very unique, is extremely repetitive at spots.


Ambivalence Avenue is probably my personal favorite.  It's a twelve-track album that incorporates his earlier sound with a strange blend of poppy, eerie vocals and hip-hop beats.  The inclusion of vocals is welcome and sounds fantastic.  "Lovers Carvings" is a upbeat, lovely ride.  "The Palm Of Your Wave" is a beautiful, catchy minimalist track about leaving each other, and "S'Vive" is a glorious, glitchy mess.


His most recent is "The Apple And The Tooth", a collection of remixes and a couple of original songs.  I'm not partial to it, but there's a fantastic remix of "Sugarette" by Wax Stag on there, and Bibio himself does a jaw-dropping remix of his own song with "The Palm Of Your Wave (Bibio Remix)".

Bibio: experimental, nostalgia-soaked, and awesome.

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