Stephen Wilkinson, aka Bibio, has reached an impressive career milestone. Bib10 is his 10th studio album and ninth on the illustrious incubator of cutting edge electronica and so-called intelligent dance music (IDM) that is the Sheffield record label Warp.
To celebrate this landmark, he has snuck in yet another collection of synth-pop, indietronica and disco-leaning tracks, while stylising his moniker into Bib10 on what he describes as a party record.
On the remarkable Phantom Brickworks in 2017, Wilkinson produced a stunning suite of improvised and field recordings for his best-received and finest album yet, delivering one of the most captivating and original records of that year. His 2019 follow up, Ribbons, was memorably described as “bottled sunshine”.
Bib10 is a more inconsistent affair. It starts pleasantly with the dreamy Off Goes the Light, a single that deftly shows off his guitar-based side, before burrowing down a not as interesting rabbit hole to search for his groove-based side.
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The brilliantly titled A Sanctimonious Song kicks Bib10 back to touch, and the closing track with Olivier St Louis also broaches excellence, but overall there’s an underwhelming sense of not quite hitting previous highs.
Perhaps it tries a little bit too hard and indulges in a genre bingo card game in the process. The beauty of being so prolific and unpredictable is that the next 10 albums are bound to be radically different, and there could well be a stone-cold classic, or two, among them.
