Bibio has a new record on the way called Phantom Brickworks, following last year’s A Mineral Love. Featuring nine new tracks, the record arrives on November 3rd through Warp. As is usual with Bibio’s releases, he offered some words about the it:

“I don’t believe in ghosts but I do believe places can be haunted by meaning. Places change, not always for the better and not always by natural, benevolent or politically sound means. A place can be charged with atmosphere because of what it has been through or what it has been.

Phantom Brickworks is a collection of mostly improvised musical pieces, that for some years now, have provided me with a mental portal into places and times – some real, some imaginary, some a combination of both. Human beings are highly sensitive to the atmospheres of places, which can be enhanced or dramatically altered when you learn about the context of their history. Echoes and voices can sometimes be heard, in some way or another. Places sometimes have things to say.”

The delicate, magical and eerie ‘Phantom Brickworks III’ is the first single lifted from the album and it comes with a perfectly paired video, also made by Bibio.

Spring is blooming with wonderful album releases, and one that we have been listening to over and over again is Bibio‘s seventh album, A Mineral Love. Bibio has recently shared a new single from the album, the marvellous ‘Light Up The Sky’, with a fitting kaleidoscopic video directed by Joe Giacomet. Watch it below.

A Mineral Love is out now via Warp.

With his seventh album nearing release date, Bibio has shared another wonderful and radiant song from A Mineral Love called ‘Town & Country’. Stephen Wilkinson aka Bibio had already teased his forthcoming album with the beautiful ‘Petals’ and the soulful and groovy ‘Feeling‘. Here’s what Bibio said in a statement about the song and his move to the countryside:

“When I lived in North London between 1999-2003 I found my feet as an artist and came up with the name Bibio. It was also by my second year in London that I knew I wanted to be in the countryside, far away from the big city. My dream was always an old country cottage with an outbuilding I could turn into a studio, the cherry on the cake would be to get a drum kit in there. That dream has now come true and my first ever drum kit is featured in this song. I wrote the drum parts but got my good friend Rob Lee to play them as he is an accomplished drummer with solid timing, it also gave me freedom to work on the miking and the overall sound of the drums as he performed. Rob also added nuances and flair that only an experienced drummer could bring to the mix. It’s a song about struggle, endurance, fantasy, longing, acceptance and appreciation. I wanted it to be both uplifting and bittersweet. It’s not necessarily about me, although written from my sympathetic perspective, but I’m sure there will be people out there who will relate to it.”

Listen to ‘Town & Country’ below and grab A Mineral Love when it drops on April 1st through Warp.

Bibio teased a new album due out in Spring 2016 with a beautiful new song called ‘Petals’ last November. Now he’s finally letting the cat out of the bag. Comes April 1st, A Mineral Love, his seventh album, will see the light of day via Warp Records. As is usual with his new releases, Stephen Wilkinson aka Bibio wrote a few words about A Mineral Love.

“This album celebrates the sacred and precious struggles of human insecurities through many windows of familiar musical forms. It’s also a celebration of my love of the craft of record making, drawing influences from many sources across all decades from the late sixties to the present. All these referential forms have a twist, some are more full on cocktails.

The album as a whole is an unashamed expression of my fondness of, and need for, variety. The juxtapositions between tracks are well considered and I’m comfortable with them – this is how I enjoy music. This is not a purist record, it is not trying to authentically recreate a specific time or genre but rather use familiar forms as a common language to communicate new ideas and new messages. I want to sing about struggle and tragedy with warmth, sympathy and respect. I want sadness to have bittersweet hope.

The whole album was made from scratch with no samples from other records. I partly want it to sound like sampled records but by crafting every single detail myself and colouring it to have familiar textures that resonates people’s forgotten memories. I enjoy the challenge of writing songs that reference the unique qualities and colours of music from different eras. It’s all guesswork though, I have no real reliable knowledge of why certain records sound the way they do, I taught myself how to play instruments, write music and produce. This album is my personal, filtered take on those forms and qualities. Some tracks are influenced by records I listen to often and some from ghosts of memories of things I heard while growing up, like 70s/80s American TV themes or 90s dance. Sometimes a filtered and tinted memory of a period is a more exciting source of inspiration than close study and mimicry.

I feel this album is built more from those memories and an exposure to music of many styles rather than close analytical study of any particular one. I think that’s why it all sounds like me, regardless of the deliberate references and nods to artists and records of the past. It is after all just a view through my stained-glass telescope.”

Bibio is enticing us even more with ‘Feeling’, the soulful and groovy new single off the album. We are feeling it! Are you?