The pair’s first full-length together lands on Warp Records on October 16th, 15 years after they first met, following recent single ‘Shame’.
Bibio (Stephen Wilkinson) and Dorian Concept (Oliver Johnson) have announced their debut collaborative album, Answers, out via Warp Records on Friday October 16th. Alongside the announcement comes second single ‘Lichen Trip’, with a video made entirely by the pair.
Wilkinson and Johnson first met in 2009, and have spent the fifteen years since building a creative relationship through shows, shared interests and an ongoing exchange of music and ideas, a relationship that already surfaced on Dorian Concept’s 2025 record Miniatures, which featured Bibio on guitar on ‘An Unopened Letter’. Answers pushes that dialogue into a fully collaborative record, built on the idea of looking back as a way of moving forward.
The album was made entirely remotely, between Vienna, Wolverhampton and rural Wales, with the pair trading compositions, video clips and ideas over email, WhatsApp and a shared folder, each responding to what the other sent and letting the music develop through listening, altering and answering. The collaboration itself traces back to Wilkinson seeing Johnson’s 2022 video for ‘Let It All Go’, which prompted him to reach out about working together on an audio-visual project.
That visual dimension runs through the whole record, with five accompanying videos made by the pair using analogue and early digital video equipment, VHS-C, MiniDV, VJ gear, video mixers and circuit-bent analogue video tools, leaning into the glitches and artefacts that come with ageing technology. Footage shot around their own surroundings became raw material to manipulate and layer, turning everyday moments and natural landscapes into something stranger.
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‘Lichen Trip’ takes its name from its triplet rhythm, pairing cyclical folk guitar with a Roland SH-101 synth run through a 2000s Eventide Orville, landing somewhere between organic and processed. Guitar, piano and synth melodies sit alongside field recordings, tape loops and processed textures, reflecting the curiosity and experimentation that shaped the record.
Answers tracklist:
- Womb Glow
- Lichen Trip
- Shame
- Pigeon Harp
- Hammock Portal
- Jelly Pencil
- Pearl Net
- Pins & Needles
- Sugar Rain
- The Unknown
- Star Bird
- Stratocumulus
- Pomegranate
Answers is out October 16th on Warp Records, available to pre-order now on black vinyl with a printed inner sleeve, 3mm spine sleeve and 6pp concertina booklet, and on CD in a 4-panel digipak with the same booklet.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
