Bonobo - The North Borders
Judging by the album title, cover art, and track list, The North Borders looks like some sort of pagan celebration of nature's power. As the album unfolds, it reveals a certain truth in that promise, by virtue of thumping polyrhythms and stormy effects. But from the outset, there lurks something unnatural—warmblooded harmonies, a mechanical shiver—evidence of a crafty soul bracing against the cruel tempest. It is present in the clatter of wind chimes in Cirrus, the galosh-clad romp of Heaven for the Sinner, Transits' electric buzz and rain-soaked clack-track. The North Borders becomes an homage to nature's inclemency, reflected through the haze of Bonobo's modern milieu. Double-entendres serve to amplify that theme—[water] Jets, [water] Towers, [astrological] Transits—and its sounds evoke a subterranean dialectic between the forces of nature and human endeavor:
I think the main expression of that from The North Borders is this idea of the last outpost of human endeavor, like there are these places...Like the flight from London to New York, half of that is going over these northern territories of Canada, and this kind of icy wasteland, and you know there’s people down there, there’s towns and stuff, but you don’t know who they are or what they do. But there’s always these little outposts where stuff is happening in the world. The sort of imagery of that was the main idea behind The North Borders. Interview on Okay Future
Ever attuned to the electronic zeitgeist, downtempo guru Simon Greene's new album sheds what he regards as EDM's now-effete jazz regalia, instead peeling a lot of heavier-hitting techniques from House music and R&B. James Blake is undeniably present in First Fires' cheeky sub-bass and plucky reverb, and the influence of Cinematic Orchestra's Gray Reverend plays out in a sentimental string interlude that feels inevitable on subsequent listens. Where First Fires sets the collaborative spirit for TNB, Emkay sets the mood. It opens with a frustrated rhythmic loop, layering in melancholy strings and cascading minor mode saxes shrouded in radio static. You can almost hear the rain running down the windows. Cirrus stirs up a primal rain-dance, highlighting the cloud formation's function as an omen of deteriorating weather conditions. The track essentially plays out as one long crescendo, culminating in pangs of distant thunder and the patter of rain.
Following Cirrus, the heavens open up to a torrent of Erykah Badu's sneering vocals and a sort of offkilter, whirlpooling beat in Heaven for the Sinner. In it, Kirsten Agresta's dreamy harp glissandos offer their cheeky angelic commentary, and the instrument's influence ripples through the more old-fashioned bass-heavy antics of Sapphire and Jets before making a clandestine departure, returning only for a ghostly cameo in the cinematic arc of Ten Tigers. The album's centerpiece, Towers, generates a perturbed energy—the sum of slightly askew rhythms, a bustling computerized backdrop, and super-rich vocal harmonies—which never quite finds release. After an ironic eternity of patient layering, Don't Wait delivers some tragic catharsis with a Kong-like bass groove and slow, heavily padded House beat. If you're feeling depressed at this point, Know You's 130BPM bump and gliding subdivision promises a change of pace; the drop at 2:18 might elicit a chill or a chuckle.
Antenna is a drunken late-night jam, laying down hard-hitting drums and bass before superimposing lepidopterous flute harmonies, as if twisting in the breeze around a streetlamp.
Ten Tigers is named after a collective of Chinese martial artists from the late Qing Dynasty, morphed over time into mythical heroes. Greene describes Ten Tigers as "these 3 or 4 sounds kind of bouncing off each other, and dragging each other against these different directions." Indeed, there is a certain combative grace in the music, a meeting of fighting styles which seem to orbit one another as they are sized up in turn. As the feathery voice of Szjerdene emerges over the underground echoes of Transits, the album slips into its final denouement. An essence of anticipation carries us into a reflective album-closer in which Cornelia's brokenhearted but headstrong lyrics drift above an understated orchestral accompaniment of morose synths, lush strings, and restrained percussion, as the camera pans slowly over the album's verdant aftermath.
With Bonobo and company now touring the North Borders, what sounds and doodads will inspire this legendary DJ's next musical excursion is anyone's guess. Whether it's more Foley, vinyl samples, or live orchestra clips, Bonobo's production technic is in a constant state of flux, rendering each successive album a timely pastiche in the hydrologic recursion of EDM.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die —
For after the rain, when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of Air —
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, live a ghost from the tomb,
I arise, and unbuild it again. — from "The Cloud," by Percy Shelley