BONOBO

“That’s when the record got really exciting for me,” explains Simon Green, otherwise known as Ninja Tune artist Bonobo, as I sit down to chat with him about his new album ‘Black Sands’. “When I was pushing myself out into unfamiliar territory with what I was trying to do.”

It’s been a decade since Bonobo’s debut album ‘Animal Magic’ was released, and in the intervening years Green has not only grown to become one of Ninja Tune’s biggest artists – selling out tours with his live band and amassing a play count on last.fm which is rapidly approaching the seventeen million mark – but has continually sought to keep the process of creating and performing music innovative and interesting: from moving to Ninja from original label Tru Thoughts; making the shift from DJing to playing with a full, live band; producing Ninja-newcomer Andreya Triana’s upcoming album; to his remixes and collaborations with a range of other artists like label-mate Fink and Blur’s Graham Coxon.

As this constant drive for evolution has also translated musically in the shift from beats and samples to predominant use of live instruments and vocals, what expectations should we have in terms of the influences and direction of the new album? “When I finished the last record I was really into the whole live thing, recording lots of live instruments and mixing in a more studio way, because I’d sort of fallen out a little bit with beat-making at the time and I think the genre was getting a bit boring for me,” he explains. “But about a year ago I got right back into the whole beat making process again because there were a few people doing really interesting stuff, which got me back into working with drum machines and samples rather than microphones and guitars,” he continues, citing the output of artists such as Floating Points, Joy Orbison and Bullion. “So I think this record’s got a broader pallet of sounds than maybe ‘Days to Come’ or the other ones before - purely because it was made over such a long amount of time and things had shifted quite a lot in those two years.”

I got right back into the whole beat making process - there were a few people doing some really interesting things like Bullion, Floating Points and Joy Orbison.

Given the length of production and change in influences during that time there was a danger that ‘Black Sands’ could have suffered from a lack of cohesion, but in fact the album flows beautifully; flirting with two-step on new single ‘Eyesdown’ and afrobeat on ‘Wonder When’, and returning to the melodies and dreamy lyrics on ‘The Keeper’ that marked out the previous album. Vocals are provided by Andreya Triana, whom Green met when she provided emergency back up for his live band at the Giles Peterson award ceremony in 2006 (where he won ‘Album of the Year’). The two then went on to collaborate on their respective albums. “The regular band were all spread out all over the world, so it was like ‘well Andreya’s in town, why don’t we get her to come along and do these tunes?’” he explains. “She came over and we just ran through a couple of tunes that afternoon - just went up and did it - and then we obviously all got drunk and then forgot all of the songs! But from then we kind of hung out and she came and did a few shows for us when Bajka or Kathrin couldn’t make it.”