Bleep

Back in the days when the contentious term ‘folktronica’ was being fought over, legitimate genre tag or not, the music world was grappling with the groundswell of musician-producers surging acoustic guitars with the uncannily jolted approach you’re likely to hear from an electronic artist. Bibio, the one-man project of Stephen Wilkinson, appeared to be at the forefront of such a stylistic misnomer, and while the organic finger-picked compositions of his breakthrough second LP, 2006’s Hand Cranked, is undoubtedly folk-oriented in the vein of Robbie Basho or John Fahey, while simultaneously sounding completely other; a musical-anthropological folk study shot to Earth from the dark side of the moon, or extracted from an alternative dimension time capsule.

The LP’s opening track ‘The Cranking House’ has precisely this anachronistic, out-of-time quality; a circular acoustic guitar pattern propelled by a cacophony of winding tones, doubly transformed into a warm, organic piece by a studiedly lo-fi recording method. ‘Cherry Go Round’ too begins this way, as a hypnotic looped guitar sample spins a modest yarn invoking long ago Summers, viewed through the sepia-tone gaze of a past life. This is music of antiquity, reimagined as the future of guitar music.

Released via Warp, Hand Cranked demonstrates that Bibio’s unique melding of folk and electronic music was unquestionably apparent from the very outset of his storied career.