Bibio - Mind Bokeh (CD) |

Bibio's music may be more familiar to you than you realize. Not necessarily becauseyou've heard it before, but because even on first listen it triggers brilliantly hazy moments of deja vu - that movie you saw on TV 20 years ago, that holiday you took with your parents, the memory of which you now strangely cherish, the song that was number one at the time, that old, hand-cranked music box you found in the attic, that old bossa nova vinyl, those sun-kissed moments of your formative years which now exist only in the recesses of your subconscious, blurry but as vividly colored as opal fruits.Of course, there is the strong possibility you have heard his music before, as the soundtrack to scores of Vimeo short films, his previous release (and Pitchfork 'Best NewMusic'd) Ambivalence Avenue, or more recently in the current Amazon Kindle adwhich took Lovers Carvings, a favorite from the last record, as its soundtrack.Since Ambivalence Avenue, his debut for Warp, he's gathered together all the disparate strands of his myriad phases and influences to create a concentrate that works as full-on, neon-lit pop. And not everyday, auto-tune pop, but champagne cork pop " a jolting, immediate, highly pleasant surprise from out of the blue, which is titled Mind Bokeh.Says Bibio, Bokeh is the out of focus region of a photograph. It's not a quantifiable thing, but photographers and lens manufacturers are obsessed with it. In Japanese it means haze, blur, or even dementia. I called the album Mind Bokeh because I'm interested in the effect of defocussing your mind, whether through meditation, chemicals or whatever " it's a state of mind quite alien to Westerners.Bibio is on the brink of big pop things but he's the anti-PT Barnum. He recalls (and firmly agrees with) a quote he memorized from an old Boards of Canada interview, always assume that the listener is the most intelligent person imaginable. If you always think like that, you never insult the listener. Mind Bokeh is the album you d