#existencemusic

Perhaps this could be filed under music for the modern druid; Bibio expresses a reverence for the natural world on Silver Wilkinson, his fourth release for Warp, that manages to seamlessly mesh found sounds, acoustic instruments and IDM elements onto the same aural canvas.

Casual listeners might be confused as to why Bibio is filed under electronica at first listen; indeed, one could easily mistake the first four tracks of this record for a collection of lost Shins or Junip b-sides. A good half of the record may be better described as something like “ambient pop”; but as pastoral as some moments on Silver Wilkinson may be, there is also a fair amount of beat-smithing, bleeps and glitches, and at moments even something akin to swagger.

My first listen was on a quick sprint up the 280 to San Francisco — the sun was setting as the first alien pulses of opener “Look…The Sun Is Rising” filled my car with panic-inducing immediacy. That first listen nearly scared me off completely; it seemed like The Terror was a beautifully-textured, sonic meditation on death anxiety (an idea that appeals to me, but not one that begs for repeat listens).

I gave the record a break and came back to it two weeks later, while doing the dishes, and found to my delight that I was listening to a completely different record — meditations on fear, yes, but also a treatise on life and rhythm and ultimately the cosmos; a kraut-rock marathon of always twitching, beating, oscillating, moving sound.

After years of touring and releasing records, LA-via-Portland existential pop quartet STRFKR (The polite spelling of their original moniker “Starfucker”) sound like a band who has arrived.Miracle Mile, STRFKR’s third full-length release and second for the always-excellent Polyvinyl, finds the band building on the successes of earlier work (2008′s breakout Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Secon, as well as the band’s much-lauded cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”).

Well-polished jams that musically bring the party and lyrically explore the meaning of death, life, and the problems of existence make up the better part of this well-sequenced record. The subtext of the lyrical and musical themes of Miracle Mile is a healthy appreciation and celebration of the relationship that exists between glitter and doom — an idea expressed by many of STRFKR’s contemporaries, perhaps, but unlike many other pop albums of 2013,Miracle Mile finds the right balance between good times and bad feelings. Sure to be among the best summer records of 2013.