Bibio — Ambivalence Avenue

Ambivalence Avenue begins promisingly, opening with a lo-fi, crackling pop number reminiscent of Woods' latest, Songs Of Shame. Things begin to drastically and repeatedly change from that point.

Stephen Wilkinson, the man behind the Bibio moniker, proceeds to take his music through a series of genre filters, and touches on soul, funk, hip-hop and techno. Taken alone, the majority of the album's tracks are enjoyable, but Ambivalence Avenue is noticeably disjointed. A couple of its songs are so cut up they're barely listenable.

On the whole, Ambivalence Avenue does well in summing up the trajectory of electro-pop's Looper. It moves from the playfulness of Up A Tree (including similar sound bites of kids in conversation), to the polished groove of The Snare. There are also a few chunks of creepy outer-space loops that would fit well in The Flaming Lips' Christmas On Mars. Don't expect anything approaching a straightforward journey.

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