Bibio – Phantom Brickworks

Label: Warp Records – WARPLP290
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: UK
Released: Nov 3, 2017
Genre: Electronic, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Ambient, Folk

An about turn from Bibio — and a revelatory one. Following his immaculately produced 1980s smooth jams, Stephen James Wilkinson surprises with Phantom Brickworks, a deeply pensive and emotive ambient long player on Warp that draws on the hauntology of place, the decay of physical objects and their memories, a musical psychogeography akin to explorations on Ghost Box, Clay Pipe Music and Folklore Tapes. Cloaked in autumnal mist, a beguiling series of aural mnemonics unfold — an instrumental set of improvisations centred on phrase repetition and the theme of human sensitivity to the atmosphere of places.

The results sit somewhere between Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, hints of Avril 14th and the knackered ballroom ethos of The Caretaker. Dusty, reverb-drenched pads lament. A piano plays itself in the corner of a dilapidated, empty church. Sepia-tinged widescreen views of once-busy places, now devoid of human activity, spread across the mind's eye — and then the future arrives, nature slowly reclaiming what is hers, ivy curling with insouciance around human endeavour. Wilkinson puts it plainly: "places sometimes have things to say." Phantom Brickworks listens. An absolutely beautiful album — if you haven't checked Bibio's work for a while, now is the time to tuck right back in.

A1. 9:13
A2. Phantom Brickworks
B1. Pantglas
B2. Phantom Brickworks II
C1. Capel Celyn
C2. Phantom Brickworks III
D1. Ivy Charcoal
D2. Branch Line
D3. Capel Bethania