Ibibio Sound Machine – Concept of Love
Ibibio Sound Machine have announced their sixth album, Chopping Mountain, due September 11 on Merge Records, and “Concept of Love” is its lead single. We covered their previous single Return to Sender (W18) back in May, where that track arrived with a darker, more defiant charge. This one sits at the other end of the emotional register: the question at its centre, “What is your concept of love?”, is delivered by Eno Williams through a vocoder as the track locks into an Afro-disco pulse, and it genuinely sounds like an invitation rather than a provocation.
The production is by Max Grunhard, who leads the eight-piece alongside Williams and who last produced an Ibibio Sound Machine record on 2019’s Doko Mien. The two albums since, Electricity (Hot Chip) and Pull the Rope (Ross Orton), each brought an outside perspective; Chopping Mountain, recorded mostly at the band’s own Vanguard Studios in South London, pulls that back in-house. You can hear it in “Concept of Love”: Alfred Bannerman’s guitar solo threads through the track with the ease of a band playing for itself, Scott Baylis’ horn stings land with precision, and the vocoder sits not as an effect but as a voice among voices. The song, Williams says, “went through many different stages”, and the care shows without the track ever feeling laboured.
I’ve followed this collective long enough to know they don’t really make a wrong turn, but even by their standards “Concept of Love” is a statement of intent: joy as something you make deliberately, together, with the world offering resistance at every step. Chopping Mountain is shaping up.
Tour dates:
Europe
- Jul. 3-4 / Glasgow, UK / WOMAD 2026
- Jul. 22-27 / Donostia, ES / Jazzaldia 2026
- Jul. 30 / Eeklo, BE / Helden In Het Park
- Aug. 1 / Floreffe, BE / ESPERANZAH!
- Aug. 2 / Nutley, UK / Good Vibrations Society
- Sep. 5 / Santa Cruz De Tenerife, ES / Phe Festival
- Sep. 11 / Reading, UK / Down at the Abbey
- Oct. 2 / Bristol, UK / Lantern Hall
- Oct. 3 / Cardiff, UK / Clwb Ifor Bach
- Oct. 7 / Birmingham, UK / Hare & Hounds
- Oct. 9 / Dublin, IE / Button Factory
- Oct. 10 / Birkenhead, UK / Future Yard
- Oct. 15 / Brighton, UK / Concorde 2
- Oct. 16 / Oxford, UK / Cowley Workers Social Club
- Oct. 22 / Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK / Gosforth Civic Theatre
- Oct. 23 / Edinburgh, UK / Liquid Rooms
- Oct. 24 / Nottingham, UK / Rescue Rooms
- Nov. 20 / Leeds, UK / Brudenell Social Club
- Nov. 21 / Leeds, UK / Brudenell Social Club
- Nov. 25 / London, UK / Islington Assembly Hall
Middle East
- Jan. 29, 2027 / Abu Dhabi, AE / The Red Theatre, NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center
