All right, everyone is writing about it, but the title and the music of this album really are incredibly coherent. Why? Because, in Japanese, »Bokeh« describes the blurry area in a photograph, an enthrallment for both lense-makers and photographers alike. Transmitted to the mind, it’s describing an almost forgotten memory, a sudden, yet unfound familiarity, a loss of memory all the way to dementia. Admittedly, this doesn’t read very inviting – luckily, it sounds all the better! Especially, since Stephen Wilkinson seems to left his coy and folky days behind, because these are thoroughly perfectly produced songs between Funk, HipHop and influences of Ambient. If it wasn’t for Bibio’s alterable voice, Mind Bokeh would remind the listener even more of Warp-label-colleagues like Hudson Mohawke, because here, too, you can trace the lurching beats skilled from J Dilla. These beats are accompanied by rather too few than too many instrumental layers, sometimes the genre even changes right in the middle of the track. However, the most atypical track, Take Of Your Shirt, which sounds like a mixture between Phoenix and QOTSA, is to remain an exception, as Bibio points out. If Mind Bokeh doesn’t trigger a memory for you or if you are to forget it within half a year, you really should begin to consider a checkup for dementia.
Mind Bokeh
