City Vibes

 |  August 31, 2009


This is another release on Warp. The rest of this review is actually superfluous because just to mention Warp is to state that this album puts the lizard in the bottle and then smashes the bottle over one’s head whilst shouting “Warp!!!!!” The record label is simply unmatched in the contemporary era. Bibio has produced a wondrous addition to this label with a finely-crafted, diverse album of folk, experimental techno and wild break-beats soaked in ambient and body-massaged by creative artistic talent. Each track is exhilarating and refreshing, one of the most original albums so far this year and this month’s must buy.


This is the third release in a series of superb EPs by perhaps the most original purveyor of cutting-edge breaks on the circuit. Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus) takes the rule book and cuts it into very small pieces, he then eats those pieces and washes them down with a nice Chianti. This is music that tricks and absorbs the listener with its originality, musicality and skankability, constantly surprising with its missed-beats, distorted strings and distant, ghostly vocals that dance across arrangements like drunk, android ballerinas. If your ears are in need of pampering this is just the tonic, a one-way ticket out of cochlear banality.


When Moby releases a new album one can literally hear the metallic groans of a million shopping centre escalators which will endure this turgid muzakcrifice day after day after day. Escalators have been rusted over by Moby’s detritus since he released the hugely overhyped ‘Play’ in 1999 when their unending cyclical torment was made infinitely worse by the soul-less yawnings of this cathartic artist and his desire to sanitise the world. The diminutive vegan has since been pumping out albums with alacrity but has not managed to express that alacrity musically; instead we have yet another verbose homage to bog-brained consumerism, one that goes in one ear and out the other.