Review
Piano notes emerge, blur, and recede like landmarks glimpsed through rain. On PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LP II), Bibio turns abandoned Welsh quarries, lakes, and industrial sites into austere ambient studies built from baritone guitar, distant voices, reverb, and loops that are, as Pitchfork puts it, “repetitive but always changing.” The record is more varied than its predecessor without losing its patience: “Dinorwic” drifts with submerged grandeur, while “Phantom Brickworks VI” gradually thickens into a layered, unstable haze.
The emotional register stays deliberately narrow—sorrowful, reflective, and steeped in erosion—but the detail keeps the music from becoming inert. The Line of Best Fit calls it “an album of melancholia, of beauty in ruins,” an apt description of music that treats decay as both historical evidence and living presence. Its finest moments, especially “Dorothea’s Bed” and “Tegid’s Court,” let voices and harmonies surface as fragments of memory, while the subtle loop changes make each return feel slightly altered. This is ambient music with a strong sense of place: quiet, mournful, and unusually tactile.
