Multi-instrumentalist and producer Stephen Wilkinson returns with a new album on Warp.
Returning to more familiar singer-songwriter territory after last year’s ambient atmospheric project, Phantom Brickworks, Ribbons finds a way to balance the two sides of Bibio’s output.
Ribbons is rooted in the ’60s and ’70s, drawing on a fertile period when ambient experiments, folk funk and psychedelic soul thrived, and Wilkinson’s use of field recordings and found sounds only adds to the evocative atmosphere.
Bibio also draws on inspiration from J Dilla and Madlib, who sampled the likes of Dionne Warwick in their own productions.
With Ribbons, Wilkinson oscillates between genres, pairing the familiar with the unknown and moving forward in a way that only he knows how to.
2019 will mark ten years since the original release of Ambivalence Avenue and Bibio’s signing to Warp.
This album has been made very much in admiration of nature yet through a tinted window of manmade escapism. Spending more time in the British countryside, walking, photographing, listening and recording has certainly affected how I’ve been thinking and expressing myself in the studio – recalling the beauty in nature and the sadness of seeing it spoiled.