Black Sands
Released
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The fourth full studio album from UK producer/songwriter/musician Simon Green is a lush collision of live jazz/soul/folk instrumentation and electronic beatology. Tracks like “Kong” are ‘classic’ Dial M-period Bonobo: a mod-ish instrumental with an MPC drum-break that slaps, while “Animals” develops this aesthetic further, recreating that earlier, sample-heavy Bonobo sound but then taking a wonderful turn halfway through into a devotional jazz workout. Elsewhere there’s rich, cinematic, orchestrated, thematic electro-sample-soul and jazz-step, happily mashing up melancholy brass, woodwind and acoustic guitar arpeggios with fiery, clattering snare patterns and occasional synths and FX.
Black Sands is an intricate, sweeping and sultry album, a further distillation of the jazz/folk/live elements of Bonobo’s sound, which although still engaging with club culture is also a further retreat from hip hop elements too, into a more expansive musical place.