Hand Cranked

Bibio | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 6, 2002)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Mush
• ASIN: B000DN5VHQ
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #351,431 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pastoral Brilliance, September 30, 2006

By 

Hoichi, the Earless (Sietch Tabr, Arrakis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hand Cranked (Audio CD)

Bibio's followup to their equally excellant debut Fi this year has been more than most impressive. Bibio stands apart from any kind of folk-psych stuff ine could name mostly because Bibio sounds so entirely different from anything else in the genre. Using hand made intruments, baryard equiptment, & whatever else, Bibio combines these most unlikely primary sources and summons forth from them the feeling of living in a pastoral painting that the british progger Caravan might have taken residence in back in their earlier days. These composistions are always having at least 5 touches of sounds in motion, curling, & interacting with everything else in a almost Philip Glass-esque way, but of course again with sounds unlike anyone but Bibio can make. These are the breezes, rustlings, weavings of grassy plains, and sighs of invisible gnomes of an English countryside you've always seen but never heard. As such as well with such uniqueness, the production owes its roots not in the polish of say Yes or Steely Dan, but also neither the treble-busting lo-fi aesthetics of something like Darkthrone or Nuit Noire. Put more simpy, this is diy production but still done aptly enough for one to detect each little stir/melody that Bibio creates and never jarring enough to ever prevent one from just being carried off to sweet netherlands of sleep while listening to it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Slightly disappointing..., November 28, 2006

By 

M. Cottone (Detroit, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hand Cranked (Audio CD)

Don't get me wrong, I love the first Bibio album, Fi. This one also has some nice moments and he has become more ambitious as far as his guitar playing and layering of melodies. The problem that I have is that every song seems to follow the same exact format, bringing in similar guitar parts at the same intervals song after song. Really no memorable melodies that stick with you. I was really looking forward to this after the original sound established on the first album as well, maybe I just set my expectations too high...

5.0 out of 5 stars Bibio - Hand Cranked, March 10, 2011

By 

scoundrel - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hand Cranked (Audio CD)

Bibio's second album, HAND CRANKED, mines much of the same area as his debut, FI, but with a noticable difference in sound. This time around, Bibio is much more wedded to folk music, though his sonic experimentation with it remains unabated. Thus, the cheery "Cherry Go Round" has much more of a rustic feel than anything on FI; "Quantock" and "Maroon Lagoon" show much more of a melodic interest, as opposed to the tone poems that populate his earlier album (though "Black Country Blue" certainly harkens back to that). "Marram" and "Woodington" have a soft melancholy surrounding them, while "Aberriw" actually adds some vocals into the layers of refracted guitars. The piano loops on "Above the Rooftops" wander around themselves, as if doing a jig. But, at his best (like on "Dyfi"), he blends nostalgia and bucolic living into a swirling mass of sound -- the countryside on peyote. A drifting, dreamy album.