The North Borders

2013’s The North Borders is another inventive, organic, jazz & sample-tronica album from Bonobo, built around club-derived beats and breaks, and live instrumentation that often falls in the spaces between jazz and folk. It feels like a continuation of 2010’s Black Sands album, a consolidation of his move toward a more expansive, widescreen sound, away from boom-bap beats and samples towards more orchestration and live playing, but there’s also a move towards slightly different dance floors too: Emkay features UK garage beats and there’s even a thumping 4/4 house style kick drum underpinning the pastoral electronica of Antenna.

Introspective, multi-layered and emotive electronic/acoustic soundscapes and songs, a continuing and confident blossoming of the Bonobo sound.