Listen.

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Bands you should be listening to #2 coming tommorow

Most belated follow up review, ever. Fuck it.

Bands you should be listening to #1: BONOBO

It seems only fitting that the first artist I write about on here is Simon Green, better known as Bonobo, a DJ from Brighton who has cemeted his way deep into my music taste quicker than any other artist has, EVER. His music is so infectious that the majority of people Ive shown him to usually become just as obsessed if not more than me, and I got the oppurtunity to see him play with a full orchestra last April and it was without a doubt one of the most powerful performances Ive ever seen to date.

So I got into Bonobo in my first year of uni, and at this stage I had never really been into electronic music in any form, except the cheesy trance pop shit all schoolkids gorged on in the mid 90s (That zombies song will still go down a storm in a room of twenty somethings). He bridges a ton of gaps for listeners less in to their electronic music in terms of genre, and it’s his music I have to thank really for getting me in to pretty much all of the music of this kind I listen to nowadays. I think as a starting point in this spectrum of music, Bonobo shows perhaps strongly than any other musician on this scene that electronic music can be cinematic, melodic, artistic, experimental and genuinely beautiful, without being at all limeted to repetitive processed collections of annoying sounds.

So anyway, the style of music he produces is unlike anything I had ever heard at the time. He fuses a load of shoegaze-y, slow electronic genres such as trip-hop, chillout, jazz, downtempo, some glitchy stuff and his unique take on dubstep with expertly arranged ‘real’ instrument sections and melodies that wouldn’t sound even slightly out of place in a legit orchestra or a jazz band. This combined with his intense skill to adapt and consistently explore new ground with each release makes him sound constantly super innovative and interesting.

The first album I got in to was ‘Dial M for Monkey’ and shortly after that ‘Animal Magic’ (the latter of which is still my favourite release by him to date), probably because both of these albums have the heavily ambient vibe I LOVE about Bonobo, it’s definately some of the most relaxed stuff he’s produced and these two albums kind of bridge a gap between ambient post-rock bands I was super in to when I started listening to him, like Explosions In The Sky, and the contemporary sound of electronic downtempo stuff that is doing really well at the moment (See Mount Kimbie, SeeKae, Burial etc). Most of his tracks, especially on the two releases mentioned, use some really original sounds (I’m pretty sure theres at least one sitar in there somewhere) to create this trippy, afterparty chillout vibe that in terms of background, relaxation, and general vibe is un-fucking-beatable, a perfect combination of technological innovation and harmony with this massively impressive orchestral, authentic, jazzy edge.

If you think you’ll dig Bonobo download these first, if you like them BUY THEM you cheap cunt:

Dial M for Monkey (2003), Animal Magic (2001), Black Sands (2010).