“Bonobo: Giving Due Props”

There’s something about the north. I was just looking at this thing my friend had put on facebook about how gas prices are expensive up here in the Chicago area, some of the most expensive in the nation, and EVERYONE was grasping at straws for a reason why this is. How about the north just being the stuff? We have the best weather, with deep freezes that kill tarantulas and other crazy bugs, and the summers are obviously temperate and beautiful. Three of the top five breweries in a recent poll came from Indiana and Michigan, and maple syrup even comes from the north, though we can also grow peaches in mid-summer.
Whoo, sorry, I get on a rant, it’s just that Four Tet was my favorite band, but then they put out a mediocre retread and then a “best new reissue” (also known as “best new coffee cup coaster”), so Bonobo stepped in. Whoo-whoo. It’s a little like Nobody too, which was a remarkable electronic musician in the ’00’s who put out two variant and phenomenal albums — The Pacific Drift and …And Everybody Else. One critique of it all is that it’s “undeveloped” or “unfinished,” but I find this preferable to music that is overly adorned or ham-handed like a lot of the tacky drum & bass or virile fart-house that’s popular these days. I’d rather read a short story that leaves me hanging.
Ok, so Bonobo is from Britain, making my whole rant about my home part of the country irrelevant. But it didn’t feel irrelevant in my mind whilst I listened to The North Borders. Music that’s great like this connects you to your ideals. Bonobo joins a nice select group that has this year supplanted other outdated musics in my mind, a group which includes namely Iceage and Joseph Arthur. The difference being, Bonobo is so homey and familiar that it can even transcend genre, replacing some antiquated rock on your iPod too, though it’s electronica, ushering naturally and seamlessly a shift further into the electronic age, while sacrificing none of the human contours that define our inner minds. Whoo. Here’s to art.