Bibio: "Excuses"

2009 was a banner year for Bibio. Within four months of pleasing longtime fans by fine-tuning his ambient-folk brand on Vignetting the Compost, Stephen Wilkinson garnered rapturous praise from new audiences with his Warp debut Ambivalence Avenue, which arrived as if his prior work—which, for all its merits, hadn’t yielded any real crossover potential—never existed.

Indeed, once Ambivalence Avenue turned heads, the days of Bibio releasing a predictable set of acoustic ditties over tape-loops were gone. The quaint nature of Bibio’s early output is important to bear in mind, if only as an aid to help recognize that Wilkinson’s never followed-up an achievement of this magnitude before. Really, how does one match a record beloved for its eclectic equilibrium without turning the same tricks? Would “Excuses,” Mind Bokeh‘s first single, trace Bibio’s established fusion of English folk and beats, or detour further into the alleyways of funk, hip-hop, and IDM that littered his breakthrough effort?

Interestingly, our first glimpse of Mind Bokeh closely resembles the final cut from Bibio’s last full-length, “Dwrcan”; in both its seriousness and glitchiness, “Excuses” maneuvers like a cerebral mood-piece between staggered beats and Wilkinson’s mournful vocals. Shredded samples and fractured loops may dominate, but it’s the quieter, “traditional” details that prevent “Excuses” from over-stimulating listeners. Without the somber synths that anchor his cut-up thwacks into a steady tempo, or the minimal guitar strings that reinforce an actual tune beneath the detritus, Bibio’s progressive approach would slip into a disorienting mess. Besides, that’s what the song’s back-end—of spectrum-squealing keys and grimy break-beats—is salivating towards: a chaotic but no less engaging minute of self-sabotage.

“Excuses” isn’t an upgrade in the sense that it improves upon “Dwrcan” compositionally, it’s an upgrade because it adapts said closing track’s experimental edge into a jagged groove. The weird has been rendered the norm; yesterday’s left-field has become today’s middle. And if Wilkinson can apply the dangerous balancing act of “Excuses” to the rest of Mind Bokeh, 2011 should be another exceptional year for Bibio.