Drone Records

BIBLO - On Ugliness

Format: LP

Label & Cat.Number: Quetzi Records QR01

Release Year: 2011

Note: introspective & haunting low-fi ambience folk with very soft female vocals, reminding on GROUPER, etc.. the project of Pinar Üzeltüzenci from Istanbul; lim. 200

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €18.00

More Info

"pop music had been an intensity-thing once, as to follow the legend, but as time passed it just started to quote and copy the erstwhile forms in a void way. the latter has never been exactly accurate, especially regarding the developments in the less noted niches. one example for that is provided by the amalgamations of folk-traditions, vanguard experiments, improvisation and outsider art, as they have boomed in the last years with acts like inca ore, pocahaunted and kuupuu. also in the music of the composer, singer, bass-guitarist and laptop-musician pinar üzeltüzenci aka biblo from istanbul - a sister in mind of all the acts mentioned above - you feel the intensity again and again in an almost painful way when it peeps through the curtain of drones and noise. her lost in reverie vocals leave you irritated and in love. we are proud to present the new biblo-lp "on ugliness" in a limited edition of 200 pieces as the first ever record on quetzi records." (label info)

"No, the ever-prolific Bibio hasn’t snuck out yet another new album as a limited vinyl release on an obscure label. This is actually an LP by a Turkish woman going under the name Biblo, who refers to her music as “ambient thrash”. Not sure what’s so thrash about it (or even what the proper definition of thrash really is), but regardless, this sounds a lot closer to ambient than any type of metal. Not much is provided in the way of liner notes, but it sounds like plenty of static loops, some toy instruments, some found sounds, and some delay-heavy girlish vocals. The dozen tracks on here progress slightly, but it doesn’t feel so much like traveling from one place to another as it feels like standing in the middle of a darkened room and watching things float around you. Even though it’s late at night, your eyes are wide open at all the illuminated objects circling you. In some sense, the “ambient thrash” tag does fit, as this is not ambient to ignore or lay back and fall asleep to, but ambient that’s active and commands attention.

While most of the tracks on this album are miniatures that only last a few minutes, the centerpiece of the album is side 2′s opener “Son Super Tembel”, which begins looping some chopped up ghostly piano, adding some more vinyl-sourced loops until they sound like a skipping record, then adding some more subtle blips, whispery vocals and small-sounding instruments. “Earth” also stands out for coating its drifting vocals in a thick layer of droning distorted guitar feedback; perhaps the song is a tribute to the band Earth. “The Eyeballs Of Truth” ends the album with its thickest layer of hiss and crackle, featuring distant piano and vocals that suggest some of the spectres in The Caretaker’s ballroom stepping up to the mic.

It’s easy to overuse the word “haunting” to describe anything that’s dark yet otherworldly beautiful, but it’s hard to think of the sounds on this album as being created by anything other than possessed beings. As dreamlike as it seems, though, it feels completely real. The whole album is an incredibly moving experience." [Paul Simpson / FOXY DIGITALIS]

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