Sleep On The Wing
Over the last 15 years, British musician Stephen Wilkinson\'s Bibio project has encompassed hazy hip-hop beats, synths, and swaths of ambient fog. His 11th studio album—and eighth for the legendary electronic label Warp—dives headlong into the guitars of British folk music, with loops of fancy fretwork and fuzzy electronic programming occasionally accompanied by Wilkinson\'s honeyed vocals. Along with its predecessor *Ribbons* from 2019, *Sleep on the Wing* finds Wilkinson returning to the pastoral textures of his early work in the late 2000s, as he unfurls hypnotizing melodies—subtly burrowing themselves into your brain and leaving a lasting impression despite their brevity.
The folky side of Bibio's music is always lovely, whether Stephen Wilkinson submerges it in blunted beats and decaying tape ambiance on Vignetting the Compost or lets the sun shine on it, as he did on Ribbons.
Records should not be judged by their covers, except in the case of Bibio's Sleep On the Wing. In this instance, the image of a city at nigh...