Hometown: Wolverhampton, England
Current Release: Silver Wilkinson
For Fans of: Four Tet, Balmorhea, William Basinski
Stephen Wilkinson—who records under the name Bibio—took this moniker from a type of fly that he and his father would use while fishing in Wales. Bibio lives up to the name he’s given himself, zipping to various sounds and styles, always hard to keep up with. On his seventh album Silver Wilkinson, released in May, Bibio creates a warm, almost cozy style, with an album that is largely electronic.
“I get this feeling people separate organic and electronic more than I do,” Wilkinson says. “I guess a lot of electronic music leans towards geometry, clean lines, quantization and synthetic textures. For me, electronic music includes acoustic sounds, earthy tones, chaos, mistakes, imperfection.”
When Bibio switched labels from Mush Records to Warp Records with his Ambivalence Avenue, his blend of the organic and electronic also matured. His sound was more confident and in the four years since joining Warp, his albums have only grown stronger. But listening to Silver Wilkinson, it’s clear that Bibio’s curiosity is in full-effect, always ready to try something new.
“I like to explore different styles so I carry on feeling excited about making music. I feel like I’ve shook off many hang ups about styles, conflicting styles, genres electronic vs. acoustic…it feels natural for me now to combine them on an album.”
Wilkinson’s past is a flurry of tastes and inspirations. After growing up in Wolverhampton, England, Wilkinson studied sonic arts at Middlesex University on North London, where he took the name Bibio. But years before that, Wilkinson was intrigued by music at a very young age.
“’Für Elise’ by Beethoven affected me when I was a small child, it woke me up to the mystery of music because it made me feel sad for no logical reason. I was obsessed with the difference between major and minor when I was a kid, with an interest leaning towards minor.”
But of course Wilkinson is all about varying tastes: “My favorite band as a teenager was Iron Maiden, I was big into metal and taught myself to play guitar that way. I then got into stuff like Portishead, Orbital, Aphex Twin when I was 16. Then Steve Reich around 19. Reich was a big influence on my music, more than anything else I think.”
By listening to Beethoven as a child, Wilkinson was taken on an emotional trip similar to the feeling he evokes with his own music. Bibio’s music almost has an inherent nostalgia to it, taking the listener to a place in their past that is personal to them, yet he does it on a large scale. It’s almost like a time machine: it’ll take you someplace special, but the location is completely up to the user.
“I tend to like music that allows you to travel somewhere in your mind, that might be into the past or some imaginary place or time. I guess it just comes out that way.” But Bibio does this all through sounds and found noises in his recording process, rather than specifically through lyrics.
“For me, the feelings which music can evoke are more profound than anything that can be said in words, and of course—they transcend words. Music in its purest form has no meaning.” It’s this sort of ambiguity that allows Bibio’s music to have a personal touch without too much specificity.
“I don’t consciously distinguish between message and feeling, but I guess feeling always overrides any intellectual theme in my music. The message is part of the feeling, or indeed the message is the feeling.”
While Wilkinson has been releasing music as Bibio since 2005, his music has recently been everywhere, rapidly gaining popularity. From Adult Swim, movie soundtracks and commercials for Toyota, Amazon and prominent placement in the first Google Glass demo, odds are you’ve already unintentionally heard Bibio.
But while Bibio has found a sound that is leading him to success and a larger audience, he’s always looking to expand his repertoire.
“I like to explore new instruments and sounds rather than sticking to what I’m best at. I want to retain some naivety in my music. For instance, I started introducing alto sax into my music with Mind Bokeh [his sixth album], I’m far from being a great sax player so there is that naivety and freshness in my sax playing, rather than sounding too confident or cocksure, which can be boring.”
That’s what makes Silver Wilkinson such an exploratory and ambitious record, Bibio’s lack of complacency and openness to try as much as possible. “Some people believe that you should find your instrument, stick with it and become a master of it,” Wilkinson states, “that’s not for me.” The album’s first single “À tout à l’heure” has Bibio’s hazy guitar and a fuzzy feel that’s instantly comforting, but only a few tracks away is “You,” a sample-heavy loop that wouldn’t sound out of place on a J Dilla compilation.
“I have too many musical interests now to just stick to one sound,” which makes Bibio a fascinating artist to keep an eye on. It’s never clear what direction he will go in next. Even his recording process is a free-flowing experience.
“The planning is always in my head and hard to translate into something that makes sense. A lot of the time, the only thing I plan is to go into my studio and switch everything on or take a guitar into my living room and play around until I find something I like, then I’ll record some sketches to my phone so I don’t forget them.”
Bibio is an artist who’s impossible to pin down because even he seems uncertain where the music will take him next. Regardless of what sounds come out of such an experimental artist, it’ll surely be a wonderful trip down memory lane.