Under blankets of mostly improvised evolving loops of piano and baritone guitar can be heard muffled specters of working life, implying nature will come for everything and eventually hide the scars.
Haunted by the faint ghosts of industry
News from the land of Grey’n’Green of Bibio‘s return with more from his Phantom Brickworks. For non-adepts, this is the ambient-drone project of Stephen James Wilkinson exploring the residual human echoes across various sites around Britain, inspired by nature, landscape and places haunted by the faint ghosts of industry:
“Human beings are highly sensitive to the atmospheres of places, which can be enhanced or dramatically altered when you learn the context of their history… echoes and voices can sometimes be heard, in some way or another. Places sometimes have things to say…”
What they had to say was recorded on his visits to these locations, observations of their gradual decline becoming part of the psycho-geographic content of the inaugural PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (2017); since release the artist has come to view it as an ongoing project—a discrete entity (while admitting elements may have seeped into other albums over the years.) PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LP II), then, is a sequel, uncovering new sites—some intriguing, vast scars on the natural landscape, others surviving only in local memories, historic clips and photographs, a few remaining hidden from plain sight, some existing purely as legends and stories.
Acclaim for the project was evident in review comments on the first record—some pointing how PHANTOM BRICKWORKS lives up to its name; it feels haunted while also offering up a hope to rebuild’ (Pitchfork), others describing it as ’a spectral set, a fragile sounding record that confidently conveys the intent of its creator’ (Clash), ’drenched in atmosphere and bristling with texture’ (XLR8R), it emerged that ‘Bibio has not only created a record that stands apart from his other Warp albums to date, but has cemented his mastery of the atmospheric; creating an album that can imprint on a listeners’ surroundings like few others’ (The Line of Best Fit).
The new PB (LPII) further pursues the overarching concept of its predecessor—of places freighted with meaning from what they’ve been through. Under blankets of mostly improvised evolving loops of piano and baritone guitar can be heard muffled specters of working life, implying nature will come for everything and eventually hide the scars. Using some of the same techniques as PB as well as developing new ones unique to itself, PB (LPII) revisits some familiar territory, musically and (psycho-)geographically, though the artist notes that ‘this album reaches beyond—extending into the realms of legends, as stories passed down through generations can sometimes haunt a place more vividly.’
PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LPII) is available November 22, 2024 on Warp. [Bandcamp]
