Bonobo - Dial 'M' For Monkey - 2x LP Vinyl

2015 repress - Bonobo’s music can be safely compared to the soundtrack scores of Angelo Badalamenti, Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini, and others, although it is also similar, musically, to contemporary artists such as Broadway Project, Cinematic Orchestra, and early DJ Krush. It is infused with a haunting, noirish element which conjures up images of smoky jazz clubs. Bonobo manage to create an exquisitely sultry and cinematic atmosphere, although sounding like less of a band effort than Cinematic Orchestra. But buried beneath the smoke haze there is a dance element which periodically surfaces. Bonobo’s music wants to be playful at times, and the hard-hitting breakbeats unearthed by Simon Green frequently speed up the tempo of the tracks to the point where it’s not too much of a stretch to classify it as “dance music.”

At its worst, downtempo can be simply turgid in its showcasing of trite samples and overused rhythms. At its best, however, it can demonstrate the artist’s skills and patience in finding just the right sound or sample for the music. Simon Green has clearly been gifted with a deftness in constructing a series of pieces which sound more like jazz compositions than snippets of jazz samples held tenuously together by a common (or not-so-common) theme. As long as Bonobo continue releasing consistently strong records such as this one and their debut, the genre of downtempo and labels like Ninja Tune Records will always have artists of which to boast and be proud.

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A1 Noctuary
A2 Flutter
A3 D Song
B1 Change Down
B2 Wayward Bob
B3 Pick Up
C1 Something (Longer) For Windy
C2 Nothing Owed
C3 Light Pattern
D1 Pick Up (Four Tet Remix)
D2 Behind The Light