In music, masters of their craft have it the hardest. Take the genre of hip-hop: once a Nas or a Lupe Fiasco has thrown all their lyrical weight at the world on a praised debut album, reinvention becomes the challenge. Both these cats have stayed afloat—certainly financially—but the head-bobs they generate are less uncontrollable than in the early days of their careers.

Stephen ‘Bibio’ Wilkinson, a seasoned electronic producer from the UK, did not learn his trade on the streets of Queensbridge or Chi-Town. He approaches his production almost theoretically, “creating illusions” for the listener as he applies some of what he learned studying sonic arts. To generalize—and reinforce some awful stereotypes—we’d say that Bibio is book-smart with sound like Nas is street-smart with rhymes. Both are masters of their craft. And to hit home with a new album, proven artists of their caliber do well to dispense with some perfectionism and inject a bit of I-don’t-give-a-fuckness in the creative process, all in the name of exploring new terrain.

In the past, Bibio has jumped from revamping folk music to treading between dance, electronica and pop quite successfully. On Mind Bokeh, his third Warp Records album, he remains in similar territory. The album provides DJ’s with filler-cuts for the dance floor, and Bibio with some dough, but save for a couple of welcome excursions into subtle psychedelia, listeners hoping for unexpected thrills will be disappointed. Reinvention does not happen.

The album seems to falter on the scope of Bibio’s ambition. A fully-committed pursuit down the ambient, dreamlike soundscapes of the magnificent closer ‘Saint Christopher’ or the album’s title track would have represented a new direction for Bibio; just as a hyper-commerical album filled with forgettable, polished rock-pop like ‘Take Off Your Shirt’ would. But these two recipes don’t sit easily with each other. Mind Bokeh contains patches of of real quality, but when said styles sit alongside jingle-funk like ‘Light Seep’ or the dull MPC-escapade ‘Anything New’, it gets a little cramped.

Words Sven Carlsson
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Bibio: Mind Bokeh
Bibio: Saint Christopher