Please welcome
BIBIO, new signing to Warp Records in 2009. A homegrown talent, he comes with the highest recommendation from fellow cohorts
Boards of Canada and
Clark; and rightly so. Bibio’s Warp debut album 'Ambivalence Avenue' is out 22nd June and you can also
download an album sampler from the following link: http://warprecords.com/bibio/Bibio-A...um-Sampler.mp3 Bibio takes his name from the inconspicuous black & red fishing fly, known amongst anglers as the bait to lure in colourful rainbow trout. With a nod to happy childhood memories fishing with his father on the Welsh rivers, parallels can be drawn in name to this quietly spoken artist and purveyor of this joyous summery music, where startling melody lines unexpectedly emerge out of grainy, glorious lo-fi.
A lover of texture and colour and noise, his first outing as a recording artist started 5 years ago on Mush Records. Having completed a trilogy of albums,
Bibio’s departure to Warp also reflects a difference in musical output.
Anyone listening to ‘
Ambivalence Avenue’ will be immediately struck by the unusual array of music. Neither electronic nor rock, this album can not actually be classified.
A diverse collection of music, each track on this opus has a distinct identity and stands apart from the next, some vocal, some instrumental, from vintage disco beats to swirling expansive pieces to plaintive guitar songs.
The eponymous title lead track
‘Ambivalence Avenue’,showcases
Bibio’s knack for melody. As with
‘All the Flowers’, quaint and contrary lyrics hark back to that quintessentially British folk tradition of the 60’s. In contrast, ‘
Fire Ant’ & ‘
Sugarette’ sees
Bibio exercising hip hop orientated production skills, swapping Black Country for West coast. And of course there are the richly layered, kaleidoscopic pieces such as ‘
Dwrcan’, but what holds these seemingly disparate tracks together is the
distinctively vintage ‘Bibio’ production aesthetic that permeates throughout.
As
Bibio commented,
“ As well as the more recognisable Bibio sound, I have been exploring other disciplines, and other styles of music. This debut on Warp really feels like a kind of artistic almanac in a sense and reflects the diversity in my musical interests. Come Autumn, I'm making moody degraded tape loop ambient stuff, come Summer I'm making stodgy beaty tracks with flutes - then there's the ups and downs of life, sad and happy songs... and of course all the music that I listen to. In the last couple of years I got excited by J Dilla and Madlib, but also going further back, an obsession with 60s and 70s Brazilian music, especially Joao Gilberto and Marcos Valle. “
Bibio’s output is at once colourful and otherworldly, textured in a way that can almost be
felt, like the sound of Victorian toys or arusty carousel
. This is Bibio’s sound, derived from laborious recording techniques with half broken primitive samplers, Dictaphones and karaoke mics, equipment which he initially fell back on through financial constraints but now almost only exclusively uses through a respect for the history and a certain quality of sound.
“…all the best stuff is happening as low key or underground production, that's where the soul and love is, some of the best music I've heard in the last 2 years is either 35 years old and from Africa or Brazil, or some unsigned artist on myspace.”
And Bibio’s sound is also owed to extensive field recordings, sampling squeaky trees and rain, a fascination with the outdoors that goes back to early childhood. Parallels can naturally be drawn with Boards of Canada, who played an important role in his musical upbringing. “A lot of my music is aesthetically influenced by nature. Organic things can be gnarly and their forms are often wigglier than man made things. Tape can be crinkled, tangled, scratched, stretched, flaked. There's something fascinating and beautiful about seeing or hearing something crumble and decay, it adds texture, noise, dust, fluff, cracks and knots - it adds unique character.
I get more turned on by a little inconspicuous photograph from an old wildlife book or film than I do by the loudest, biggest, brightest, slickest masterpiece.”
And so here is Bibio, an artist who finds inspiration in all the surrounds him, the organic as well as the synthetic, the result of which is powerfully subtle and luminous. New Warp signing Bibio: album ‘Ambivalence Avenue’ out 22nd June + free album sampler Bibio on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads Warp / Records / Bibio "The antidote to the modern laptopia of pristine electronic music" – Marcus Eoin, Boards of Canada
“ This unassuming, humble pioneer of the Midlands consistently lives his music, and has a massive appetite for continually pushing himself, which is a delight to witness. His style has evolved over the 3 years I've known him.
I'm always on at him to make tweaked out electronic stuff, and he's pushed me into new directions too, I'd never dream of using a guitar, but hearing his work and ideas has inspired me to create mammoth sine harmonies from amps and strings, which I never thought possible. So our rivalry has bloomed into kinship. There's no other like the Bibio. You owe it to yourself to let the little bastard into your life. “ – Chris Clark
New Warp signing Bibio: album ‘Ambivalence Avenue’ out 22nd June + free album sampler
'Common People. Britpop: The Story' - Album release date: June 22nd 2009