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Bibio
Fi
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.date Jan-25-2005
.style Ambient
.label Mush
.cat.no. mh-234
.source CDDA
.type Album
.quality VBRkbps 44,1hz Joint-Stereo
.size 64,2 MB
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Stephen Wilkinson, the English composer/producer known as Bibio, was
recommended to the experimental electronic music stalwarts at Mush
Records by one of the genre's pacesetters, Boards of Canada's Marcus
Eoin. Boards' take on electronic music is so eminent and frequently
imitated that it's become almost a sub-genre in itself. Their seal of
approval is a valuable currency, and their scintillating ambience is a
clear influence on Bibio's music. So is the fractured mien of esoteric
electronic acts like Aphex Twin and Autechre, who Bibio discovered while
studying music at the University of London. Of these three influences,
Autechre is the most cold and sterile; Boards the most emotive, although
in this sort of music, emotion generally manifests as a tension between
human desire and artificial systems-- the raw stuff of feeling
abstracted and viewed through a microscope. It seems to say: this is
what it would feel like to feel, were genuine emotion possible in an age
of ramifying obsolescence.
To that end, Bibio inflates his music with more verdure and humanity
than any of the aforementioned acts, as a large part of his style
involves yoking heavily processed electronics to pastoral guitar lines
and natural found sound, liked a glitched-out Windsor for the Derby.
"Bibio", apparently, is the name of a fishing lure Wilkinson's father
used on trips to Wales where a young Stephen developed his love of
natural sounds. Surprisingly, his naturalist aesthetic rubs placidly
against the ambient disarray of his debut, fi, a shoegazing drone that
pays homage to the natural world simply by documenting it-- by
listening, a simple thing that many of us often forget to do. Bibio
sometimes veers toward the vanishing minimalism of Keith Fullerton
Whitman, as on opening track "Cherry Blossom Road", where a quiet,
beatific synth tone wraps around itself again and again. But just as
often, he indulges a sort of breathy melodicism, as on the gleaming
arpeggios of "Bewley in White" and "Looking Through the Facets of a
Plastic Jewel".
The album is not abrasive; in fact, it's soothing, but it is also
saturated with distortion and synthetic effects that seem to represent
technology's degradation of the equilibrium of ecological cycles. Or
perhaps the modulating crackle winding through the idyllic guitar lines,
birdsongs, and ambient wind effects represents nothing less than the
human virus that creates the technology, which will eventually
annihilate those tenuous, fragile sounds-- a paranoid but viable vision
with which Boards of Canada, too, seem familiar. But Bibio forgoes
Boards' precise rhythmic thrust in favor of more meandering, ramshackle
compositions that paint ephemeral imagery in broad strokes of primary
colors, wafting through your peripheral vision. His analog bent and
penchant for lo-fi, malfunctioning equipment bestow upon fi an aura of
intimacy and transparency, where each sound that comprises the spacious
armatures is discernible. It's a familiar formula-- begin in serenity,
introduce conflict, watch the theoretical dimensions unfurl-- which
Bibio, with his naturalist's disposition, eases through with a delicate
and appreciative eye. One imagines strolling through a dewy glade and
finding HTML tags, instead of lovers' initials, carved into the trees.
--Pitchfork review by Brian Howe
______________________________________________________________________________.
Fi
01 Bibio - Cherry Blossom Road
02 Bibio - Bewley in White
03 Bibio - Puffer
04 Bibio - Cluster at Cwm Einion
05 Bibio - London Planes
06 Bibio - it Was Willow
07 Bibio - I'm Rewinding it...
08 Bibio - Looking Through the Facets of A Plastic Jewel
09 Bibio - Wet Flakey Bark
10 Bibio - Bewley in Grey
11 Bibio - Teleidophonic Torch
12 Bibio - Puddled in the Morning
13 Bibio - at the Chase
14 Bibio - Cantaloup Carousel
15 Bibio - Lakeside
16 Bibio - Bewley in Red
17 Bibio - Poplar Avenue
. .
48:59 min
______________________________________________________________________________.
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▀▄ ██████████
▀▄ digaphobia ██████████ peace to music lovers everywhere
▀. public ██████████
▀. sound ██████████ 1real - amok - bcc - cmg - cmc - cms - diss
: █████▀████ drum - fuffens - hit2k - just - kw - nuhs - om
: ███████▀██ rac - radial - sb - sfe - soup - sour - tr - ube
. ██▄███████ _______________
▀██▀█ ▀██
▀▀ ▀ █▀██ go to the show
▀█ ▀ ██ buy the t-shirt
██ ▀ ▀█ ▄ order the vinyl
▀ ▄ ▀ ▀ _______________
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