Bonobo seeks new ways to fashion his beats

When he joined the Ninja Tune label in 2001, Simon Green (aka Bonobo) was the prototypical Ninja artist—an inveterate crate digger who fashioned his left-field jazz tracks from bits of other people’s songs. In support of 2003’s Dial ”˜M’ for Monkey, the British producer formed a live band and turned his gigs into full-bodied elaborations of his studio material. By the time 2006’s Days to Come was released, Green had abandoned vinyl sampling altogether, building his songs from scratch with a variety of vocal and instrumental collaborators. In his move from ’90s-style sampling to more traditional recording practices, the Englishman’s career has mirrored the evolution of the label he is signed to.

“Ninja has definitely kind of changed its identity since it first started out,” Green says, reached at his London home. “Ninja back in the day was always turntables and jazz and sampling and electronica. But over time, it’s become quite diverse and open to songwriting in a variety of forms. There were a lot of labels in the ’90s that were fashionable for a time and then crashed. Ninja was able to survive its own hype and become a very strong label.”

The producer is quick to add that his newfound studio approach is no more “authentic” than his previous sample-based style, nor does it represent a simple reversion to record-making orthodoxy. For a 26-year-old who grew up on hip-hop, house, and drum ’n’ bass, recording acoustic instruments is, ironically enough, a pretty strange way of working.

“The only criteria I have with every new album is to keep moving on from what I’ve done before,” he explains. “I’d been sampling for so long and wanted to find new ways of keeping things interesting for myself. So instead of digging for breaks on records, I’ve become more interested in miking up instruments. If I ever become too used to this approach, I’ll probably move on to something new again.”

Currently halfway through recording the next Bonobo album, Green has also been working with British singer Andreya Triana on a suite of folk and soul songs—an Everything But the Girl–style project where he plays a young Ben Watt to her Tracey Thorn. Where those endeavours are quiet and leisurely, the producer’s recent singles as Barakas are just the opposite—noisy mongrel breeds of breaks and funk aimed squarely at the dance floor. For however many strides Green has made as an acoustic performer, the Barakas project finds him reverting back to the site of his musical beginnings: the sweat-soaked, strobe-lit discotheque.

Bonobo plays a DJ set at Richard’s on Richards tonight (February 21).

Comments