Bonobo

Simon Green recently struck a deal with Ninja Tune, and now to set the stage for a new release the Ninja camp has spread the down-tempo genius of Animal Magic onto a much larger audience than it did last year on the tiny UK label, Tru Thoughts. This debut full length, under the monkey name of Bonobo, is nothing short of spectacular with its beautiful atmospheric sounds, most of which are created by Bonobo himself. "A few tracks are completely live," says Green of Animal Magic. "I start with laying down guitars or keys or something acoustic and put it into a four-track and listen to it all, find a bit that's working and put it through a sampler." The end result is a much warmer sound that's becoming lost in electronic-based music, opting for live instruments and samples of strings and horns. The album is also a nice collage of climactic sounds, starting simple with a breakbeat or a quiet bass line and gradually building into a wonderful arrangement of various instruments. Along with recording duties, Green also wrote and produced the entire gem on his own, making Animal Magic and even that more astounding. "Basically through working with people in the past I had to sort of compromise a few ideas," Green recalls of preceding projects. "And the result of that is basically me going off and working on my own. And I just enjoyed it much more, got a lot more work done and was happier with the way things sounded." Animal Magic has a lot of similarities to Green's good friend Amon Tobin's more down-tempo cuts, but like Tobin there might be some progression into a deeper tone for Bonobo's first Ninja Tune album next year. "It's sounding a lot bigger," says Green of future Bonobo workings. "It's got a little more energy and it's a bit darker. That's just the way it's shaping up at the moment, but it's sounding different, which is an important thing I think."