Bibio : Vignetting The Compost & Ovals And Emeralds w/ Interview

What’s in name? That which we call a rose... Bibio, named for the type of fishing lure, carries an instantly attractive sound, very much reminiscent of rolling, smooth-stoned rivers and high green, waist-deep boots, but with the affected, homey, warbly cassette-tape feel of a Nick Drake recording.

Stephen Wilkinson, the UK producer who records as Bibio, takes much of his sound from contemporary experimental electronica (i.e. Boards of Canada), although the rambling, natural cadence of the guitar and banjo sounds and multi-part vocal harmonies that decorate this shady, river-side landscape isn’t exactly what one pictures when thinking about electronica.

Vignetting the Compost and Ovals and Emeralds, his two 2009 releases, both share very much of an energetic live band feel, but the incorporation of natural sounds and tone create an unmistakable ambience which is difficult to describe but which fits seamlessly with the array of swelling and retreating melodies.

On many of these tracks, the instrumentation will suddenly shift, prescient vocals will suddenly emerge in harmony or the naïveté of a toy piano will sound out or perhaps even the track will fade out into lazy day synths that oscillate into and out of tune. Even so, the solid thematic approach to the music’s tonal landscape is fantastic and consistent, and you will suddenly find you have devoured both albums, probably in one sitting.

A little side note: cLOUDEAD is also in this label (Mush Records) and that makes sense.

Also, perhaps this is jumping the proverbial gun because the rainy season in the midwest has only just begun, but I foresee Vignetting is easily going to be by my rainy-day album pick for the year.

MOKB : Let’s start off with an easy one: what does your music sound like?

Stephen Wilkinson : Flickering spots of amber light shaped by the leaves of trees.

MOKB : Vignetting the Compost certainly sticks to a sort of rustic, smooth-stoned river theme: how important is theme and how do find inspiration for the natural sounds you use to accent that theme, if accent is the right way to put it?

Stephen Wilkinson : I suppose with VTC I'm trying to paint musical scenes, and I've deliberately gone with a John Constable or Thomas Bewick perspective with some of it. The guitar, or indeed a plucked string instrument, has quite a life span and doesn't really belong in any particular decade, and you can have fun with that. I like making it sound as if it could've been recorded within a bandwidth of centuries rather than decades, so it's not quite obvious what decade it's supposed to be in. Using field recordings and treating them in similar ways to how I treat the guitar fits them into this imaginary era. I want the sounds to bring the organic natural world from the outside, inside. I want the listener to imagine places, either fictitious or remembered from far back. The treatment of the sounds and the instruments is an attempt to create a more warm painterly picture, so the murkiness and the warble help create that texturally.

MOKB : I was talking last night to a friend about electronica music – that American electronica is colored by R&B and hiphop more than it is by any classical instrumentation or composition, and it has come to be seen as such here. What do you think colors the brand of electronica you play?

Stephen Wilkinson : Electronica? I don't think my music is electronica. It's just music, it has no brand other than Bibio. I'm not one to follow genres so I don't ever feel obliged to make my music fit into a genre. People will label me with horrendous terms like folktronica, but I just ignore them. I don't sit still long enough anymore be called folktronica.

MOKB : Would you tell me about your creative process? What sorts of instrumentation do you use, electronic gear, etc.?

Stephen Wilkinson : Guitars, both electric and acoustic, and a bass. A few microphones, a cheap mixer, an iMac, Logic Pro 7, reel to reel tape recorders, cassette recorders, analogue synth/filters, a valve compressor and an MPC is my main setup... oh and a trolley full of shakers, woodblocks, cowbells and other hand percussion. I work in different ways, sometime recording overdubs of guitar and then layering other sounds, other times start off with drum samples, drum machine samples or noises on the MPC and create beats or patterns, then I'll layer melodies over that. The aging or taping process can be during the composition or the latter stages.

MOKB : Your guitar (if it is indeed a guitar) tone sounds a lot like Nick Drake to me. Are you attempting to emulate a tone or did it sort of just come about? How do you create that kind of sound?

Stephen Wilkinson : Nick Drake is an influence for sure. The way he tunes his guitar and the finger picking styles he used have influenced me, I'm sure there was nothing fancy about his production, probably just a mic and a reel to reel. I generally prefer the sound of certain instruments, particularly guitar and piano, when they have tape saturation and wobble on them. I sometimes record straight to tape, other times I'll record straight to Logic and then send each separate overdub through a tape recorder one by one and back into the computer, maybe via EQ and compressor. It's a laborious process and synchronization can be tricky because tape recorders don't keep perfect time. I've been doing that for years though so I have a knack for it. I sometimes use 2 reel to reel machines working as one, I call this my saturation station hehe. Sometimes the process is about getting rid of frequencies rather than enhancing them. I've never been that fond of crystal clear bright guitars recorded with an expensive condenser mic straight to pro tools, I'd always want to round off the sparkle and make it sound 60s and wooden.

MOKB : What does a live show of yours look like?

Stephen Wilkinson : So far: me with an electric guitar, MPC, mixer and pedals, and my own super 8 films.

MOKB : What are you listening to right now?

Stephen Wilkinson : Clark - Growls Garden EP.

This year, Stephen signed with Warp Records and will release his Warp debut in late June.

Bibio - Six String Marenghi
Bibio - Dopplerton

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