Following on from a milestone 10th album and a string of reissues from earlier in his musical journey that have dropped throughout the year, Bibio continues the trend of following up each album with an EP. His new Sunbursting EP touches on Brazilian and yacht rock with a wide variety of instruments accompanying the vocals of Olivier St. Louis. One for the endless summer.
Here’s Bibio on how the record came about:
Since the release of Ambivalence Avenue in 2009, I’ve followed up every one of my albums with at least 1 EP. Each of my albums feels like a distinct chapter in my life, and the EPs are a way of expanding a chapter before I move onto something entirely different. An EP is therefore a sort of satellite release to an album, and allows me to explore more ideas and variations within each chapter. Sunbursting EP is therefore part of the same world as BIB10, yet explores some new ideas and includes some new instruments and sounds. As well as collaborating with the gifted Olivier St. Louis on “Sorry (Won’t Cut It)”, I also had contributions on the track “Rosewoods” from some excellent session musicians from Glasgow (Ian Hendry on drums, Tony Graham on additional horns), and Dorian Concept contributed some keys too. The album closes with a meandering bittersweet piece originally composed on guitar, but later I invited the wonderful and unique Icelandic tenor sax player Óskar Guðjónsson to play on the track “Sunbursting”, the melodic themes accented by Conor Smith’s pedal steel guitar playing. Óskar has a unique and incredibly soft tone, often making the tenor sax sound like a completely different and unique instrument. Other tracks were performed entirely by myself, some with live drums and some with drum machines, it’s a very hands-on EP where I layer many instruments, including guitars, keys, sax, synths, glockenspiel and percussion. Influences come in fragments, where I might take ideas in the form of small elements from different eras and genres and combine them into a patchwork of influences, such as themes from Blue Magic’s song intros, Prince, Brazilian legends such as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Marcos Valle and Arthur Verocai, and there’s a touch of yacht rock and funk influence in there too.