''Sleep on the Wing'' is the follow-up to

Bibio Stephen James Wilkinson (born 4 December 1978), better known as Bibio, is an English musician and producer. He is known for a distinct analog Lo-fi music, lo-fi sound, and for working in a diverse range of genres, beginning in folktronica and ...

's ninth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

Ribbons A ribbon or riband is a thin band of material, typically cloth but also plastic or sometimes metal, used primarily as decorative binding and tying. Cloth ribbons are made of natural materials such as silk, cotton, and jute and of synthetic mate ...

; it was announced on 5 May 2020, and was released on 12 June 2020. The release consists of ten new songs, only two of which contain lyrics. Upon release, the EP received generally favourable reviews.

Recording and release

The mostly instrumental songs were recorded at Bibio's countryside home in the

midlands The Midlands (also referred to as Central England) are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in the Ind ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, with only two tracks featuring lyrics. The music includes field recordings of nature sounds such as birds and running water. All instruments were performed by Bibio himself, including

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

tape loop In music, tape loops are loops of magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound when played on a tape recorder. Originating in the 1940s with the work of Pierre Schaeffer, they were used among cont ...

, and

turntable A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

. The EP was announced on 5 May 2020 along with the release of the title track. The same day, a music video directed by Sonnye Lim premiered on YouTube, featuring animated elements from the artwork for the release. The EP was released on

Warp Records Warp Records (or simply Warp) is a British independent record label founded in Sheffield in 1989 by record store employees Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell and record producer Robert Gordon.Southern, Richard (2003) "Label of Love: WARP", X-RAY, A ...

on 12 June. According to Bibio, the release is a companion piece to the 2019 album

and shouldn't be considered a full album. On 15 June, Bibio released a music video for "Oakmoss" that featured the artist playing a fully acoustic version of the song. Throughout July and August 2020, videos for the songs "Otter Shadows", "Crocus", "A Couple Swim", and "Awpockes" that featured rural landscapes were released on Bibio's YouTube channel.

Reception

''Sleep on the Wing'' received an average of 70/100 based on five reviews on the aggregator

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, indicating generally favourable reviews.

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

named it one of the best releases of 2020, calling it "quintessentially Bibio," and "just as winning" as the 2019 album ''Ribbons,'' writing that "spending more time with it is a joy."

Exclaim! ''Exclaim!'' is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly Exclaim! print magazine publishes 7 ...

magazine commented that "the sound is never gritty or raucous, by any means, but the almost jarring collision of genre remains hopeful without getting comfortable." In a mostly positive review,

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, fi ...

said that "it’s a pretty good record, and the songs will linger with you after you’ve stopped spinning the record – it’s just that Wilkinson is capable of so much more."

Track listing

References

{{bibio Bibio albums 2020 EPs Warp (record label) EPs