The latest full-length from Stephen Wilkinson's Bibio moniker, A Mineral Love, is saturated in sounds from decades past, coming off as something of a sample album tinged with his own persona for listeners to revel in.
A Mineral Love strays quite a bit from Bibio's warm electro-pop musings of albums prior, though, reaching to the past for sounds that don't quite fit. "Why So Serious" is a crystalline synth ballad plucked straight from the '80s, while "Feeling" opens with a cringe-worthy blast of bleating saxophone and wah pedal reminiscent of a '70s TV theme. "With the Thought of Us" shows promise by offering up the pounding key-based hook, a thrumming back beat and deep resonant synths in tandem with the more upbeat offerings of previous releases such as Mind Bokeh and Ambivalence Avenue, but on the whole, the album suffers from a bout of dullness, with the majority of tracks mingling in a grey area, struggling to push through their apparent amalgamation and stand on their own.
(Warp)A Mineral Love strays quite a bit from Bibio's warm electro-pop musings of albums prior, though, reaching to the past for sounds that don't quite fit. "Why So Serious" is a crystalline synth ballad plucked straight from the '80s, while "Feeling" opens with a cringe-worthy blast of bleating saxophone and wah pedal reminiscent of a '70s TV theme. "With the Thought of Us" shows promise by offering up the pounding key-based hook, a thrumming back beat and deep resonant synths in tandem with the more upbeat offerings of previous releases such as Mind Bokeh and Ambivalence Avenue, but on the whole, the album suffers from a bout of dullness, with the majority of tracks mingling in a grey area, struggling to push through their apparent amalgamation and stand on their own.