The New Bonobo Album – Distance in Static – Widening the Frame

Anca

With more than 12 years spent at the crossroads of culture, communication and international exchange, Anca has built her career around one simple idea: culture is at its best when it brings people closer. Her extensive background encompasses international education, public diplomacy, and cultural programming. For the past five years, she has taught Romanian language and culture to U.S. government personnel, while more than a decade of collaboration with the Embassy of Romania in Washington, D.C., brought her close to cultural events, artists, communities.

But music has always been the constant. She loves discovering artists, following the stories behind their records and understanding what makes a song belong to a particular place, mood or moment. At Lounge Avenue, she brings out that curiosity — looking beyond playlists to the people, influences and stories behind the music. Expect discoveries, conversations, cultural detours and the occasional track you didn’t know you needed to hear.

On September 11, Bonobo returns after 8 years with a new album Distance in Static. The full record will be launched today, but five tracks have already been released before the launch, leaving the impression that the album feels both immediately familiar and subtly different.

Even though, this does not sound as a farewell album, we should listen to it as if it might be the last one delivered in its traditional format of guest collaborators and a full live-band world tour, as Simon Green expressed his intention to try something else, to find his freedom to experiment and look into some others sources of inspiration.

Bonobo’s music on this album is a familiar landscape, but never quite the same one. Distance in static is the perfect exemple of a perfect blend of downtempo tunes with dance floor rhythmic electronic vibe, but with a bit more profoundness and emotion. The diverse and original voices, the lyrics in English, Urdu and Japanese, alongside historic Iranian samples and guzheng recordings, make of this album a masterpiece, suspended in time and place. The time and space limitations are irrelevant, we can look and find pieces of us not only in space, but also in time, in the past, present and the future, as Simon Green suggested.   

The track that stands out for me so far is “Always on Your Side” featuring Joy Crookes. Crookes does not simply sing over a Bonobo production, her voice seems to inhabit it. Warm, textured and slightly worn at the edges, it moves through the track with an ease that makes the whole thing feel almost private. It also gave me a feeling of a vintage, retro, 70’s sound that sticks with me every time I listen to it. It sends me somewhere with mellow lightning, velvety sounds and old tobacco smell.

“Fire on the Water” with Arooj Aftab, moves somewhere else entirely. The track has an almost suspended in time quality. The Grammy winner Pakistani-American artist, Aftab’s Urdu vocal seems to drift through the music, while Green creates through his guitar loop a landscape around her that feels sparse, warm and mysterious. The lyrics inspired by poetry from Yasra Rizvi, transform this track into a lyric moment, a meditation background, where dreams and thoughts flow and they seem to have a liquid form. 

On “Talk to Me,” featuring Nicole Miglis, that atmosphere becomes more intimate still. There are voice, textures and small fragments of sound that seem to emerge from the background. I love the pause and the focus on Miglis’s vocals. It creates the sensation of catching your breath, taking your time, not rushing. There is a human looseness beneath Bonobo’s precision of the production. It is controlled, but also unexpected. Even if his music may be electronic, it never feels mechanical. It’s like when you’re too shy or emotional, and your heart skips a beat because you can’t find the right words to express your feelings. 

Then comes another version of Simon Green. “Drift” and “Me and You” move closer to the club energy, with stronger rhythmics and movement. But even here, Bonobo never seems interested in the obvious. The drums, bass and  4/4 beats are only one part of the story. There are details behind it. Small sounds, dissonant subtle key switches, melodies that appear briefly and disappear again. Moments that may pass unnoticed the first time and become the reason you return to the track again and again. That, perhaps, is one of the pleasures of listening to Bonobo. His records are rarely exhausted by a first listen. For me, both tracks gave me a strong urban feeling. They transported me in the middle of a city I had to leave at some point and it evokes all the faces, memories, laughter, and sublime feelings I experienced there.

Listening to Distance in Static is like stepping into a world of magic. It’s a delightful surprise to discover something new, yet it feels like a warm embrace from an old friend. It’s like encountering someone you haven’t seen in ages, and while their face may not be easily recognizable, their soul is instantly familiar.

 In Distance in Static, Bonobo sounds like an artist still curious about what might be hiding around the next corner. More rhythmic in places, deeply atmospheric in others, and surrounded by some exceptional voices, it feels like Bonobo is not trying to reinvent himself but he is widening the frame.