From presenting themselves as standard bearers of IDM to championing the likes of Battles and Grizzly Bear, Warp must know all about broadening musical interests. In the past two decades, the Sheffield stalwarts have expanded to accommodate an impressively diverse roster. And much like his home label, Stephen Wilkinson – the Wolverhampton artist perhaps better known as Bibio – has been through a similar process of change.

But strangely enough, it wasn’t until he joined Warp that his sepia-tinged folktronica gave way to a more accessible output, beginning with Ambivalence Avenue little under two years ago. Given that Amazon bosses recently enlisted his music in their efforts to flog Kindles (the coda of ‘Lovers’ Carvings’ pretty much unavoidable in the pre-Christmas ad deluge), Mind Bokeh is perhaps the first time Bibio has met weighty expectation outside of the Warp fan bracket.

As Wilkinson recently explained, ‘bokeh’ is a Japanese term referring to the blurred regions of a photograph, somewhat fitting for an album that strives to explore the art of “defocusing the mind”. It is not a trite analogy – in any sense of the phrase, Mind Bokeh is certainly ‘out of focus’. Throughout, he visits a vast array of reference points, bending each genre encountered charmingly out of shape; and as these hues develop, we are left with an intriguing collage. In many ways, it also works as Ambivalence Avenue’s more realised companion piece: the soulful romp of ‘Light Seep’ picks up almost exactly from where ‘Jealous of Roses’ left off, whilst the smile-inducing shuffle of ‘K is for Kelson’ radiates much like Ambivalence Avenue’s sun-flecked title track. Vocals continue to drift further towards centre stage, but as first hinted on segue EP, The Apple and the Tooth, these have evidently been left to ripen.

This level of ambition can become a hindrance, however. The main culprit here is ‘Take Off Your Shirt’, a turgid guitar strut that supposedly pays homage to Thin Lizzy. As Wilkinson decries drunken displays of machismo and the nauseating tackiness of a night out on the tiles (“Red devil horns dropped in the road / tiaras made out of plastic gold” a noteworthy observation) it’s certainly an interesting experiment – and if a nocturnal rampage through Bibio’s hometown is as dangerous as my housemate tells me, then it almost validates any song that packs in power chords to the hilt. ‘Take Off Your Shirt’ could serve to demonstrate even more versatility, but in the context of Mind Bokeh, it baffles. Furthermore, its position at the halfway mark also gives way to the album’s weakest endeavours: the meandering ‘Artists’ Valley’ and the instantly forgettable ‘More Excuses’.

As a conclusion is forged within the crystalline textures of gorgeous closing instrumental ‘Saint Christopher’, we could dismiss these as minor foibles; Mind Bokeh retains at least some of the appeal first found in the cassette-hiss folktronica of the artist’s pre-Warp days. But although there is an audacity to be admired here, you can’t help thinking what this record could have been with a little less of that “defocusing”.