Review: BONOBO – “Distance In Static”

Twenty-five years of career can all be heard in «Distance In Static», the new album by Simon Green with his moniker Bonobo.

Fourteen songs built to flow into each other, an admittedly clubby mosaic designed to be listened to in sequence and not in separate episodes. It is the synthesis of a path rather than its evolution.

The first single, Me and Youdescribes this phase well. A dancefloor-oriented track with a retro ethnic flavor that Green has already tried out in his own DJ sets, including two sold out pop-ups in London and Paris. Compared to previous albums such as «Migration» and «Fragments», here the narrative tension of the album gives way to a more immediate enjoyment: many songs seem written with a set or a playlist in mind, not an unpredictable compositional gap.

The cast of collaborators, from Arooj Aftab to Joy Crookes, from Nilüfer Yanya to Ichiko Aoba, passing through Nicole Miglis of Hundred Waters, Aanya Martin and Kanako Yamamoto, certifies a maturity in working relationships that Green had not yet shown with this breadth. The voices broaden the linguistic perimeter of the album, English, Urdu, Japanese, and the timbral one, guzheng, Iranian samples, environmental textures, without breaking the coherence of the whole. The additions are carefully chosen, not combined for collecting purposes, and the album remains a unitary work rather than a playlist of features.

When Green works on his own material, minimal almost classical motifs, catchy melodies, dirty basses, upbeat rhythms that draw from his 4/4 repertoire, «Distance In Static» returns close to his historical signature, playful but already heard.

The drum patterns remain crystal clear and nothing else. Sequencers rattle around without ever turning on. The strings, rather than filling the songs with pathos, end up hostage to the EDM system, a pure structural piece. The album slips into a clubby feel that is more recycled than inspired, with tracks that seem engineered for a specific environment or playlist: at times anonymous, lacking the freshness that was the hallmark of Green’s previous works.

Visual attention is also part of the design: the cover, entrusted to Trevor Jackson, is the right frame for a record that focuses entirely on essential measure.

«Distance In Static» is what it seems: solid, coherent, produced with attention that borders on obsessiveness. It confirms Bonobo as an author capable of bringing club and home listening together. We like it better when it reaches for the guzheng and Iranian samples than when it goes back to its more predictable 4/4s.

TO LISTEN NOW

Fire on the Water (feat. Arooj Aftab) – Youth’s Fountain (feat. Nilüfer Yanya) – Equinoctial (feat. Ichiko Aoba)

TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY

The record flows. On second listen the first track I would skip would be Drift

SCORE: Score 7.00

TRACKLIST

Dawn
Cycles
Fire on the Water (feat. Arooj Aftab)
Drift
Talk to Me (feat. Nicole Miglis)
Uncasually
Always on Your Side (feat. Joy Crookes)
Youth’s Fountain (feat. Nilüfer Yanya)
Shokoufeh
Can’t You See (feat. Aanya Martin)
ID700
Me and You
Equinoctial (feat. Ichiko Aoba)
Mercury (feat. Kanako Yamamoto)

DISCOGRAPHY

2001 – Animal Magic
2003 – Dial ‘M’ for Monkey
2006 – Days to Come
2010 – Black Sands
2013 – The North Borders
2017 – Migration
2022 – Fragments
2026 – Distance In Static

THE VIDEOS

WEB & SOCIAL

@si_bonobo