I would love to see Bibio perform live some day, but that day doesn’t seem likely. There is a small chance I would die during “Lovers Carvings.” This might be the closest I get, though.
On the final day of summer, a performance of ‘Ribbons’…
I often get asked about touring and playing live, and although I have travelled to many countries around the world in the past to do shows, I’ve always felt at home as an artist in my studio, as opposed to on a stage. As ‘Ribbons’ is predominantly an album of overdubbed recordings of real instruments, all played by myself (apart from a few exceptions), it made it far more difficult to translate these recordings to a stage performance, especially when considering my studio recording techniques as being such an important part of my overall sound, I don’t want to compromise on that.
I still wanted to offer my listeners some insight into the performance aspect of the album, so I decided to shoot a few session videos. I had shot session videos in the past of songs from my 2013 album ‘Silver Wilkinson’, with the help from some musician friends in Somerset, England, but this time I decided to tackle the thing myself, and video myself playing each instrumental layer separately, editing them together, similar to how I work when I arrange and record music in my studio. To offer some visual variety within these sessions, I chose to shoot the sessions in my home, studio, and a couple of locations in Staffordshire, England, and Ceredigion, Wales, with just the assistance of my partner Holly to help carry the gear and set up.
As a bonus, enjoy a live version of “Lovers Carvings,” recorded for Warp Records 20th anniversary.