Bonobo’s album ‘Days to Come’ won Gilles Peterson’s Radio 1 listener’s prize when it released in 2006. A very quiet and steady orchestration of down tempo chillout, it occupied a similar musical space to The Cinematic Orchestra, Air and Zero 7. Sparse, gentle: the sort of thing that traditionally found interest among people listening to music all day long, and using sounds like this as a background canvas. Bonobo has featured on adverts, subtly lifting the mood without anyone knowing. Today, ‘Black Sands’ hovers in the ‘picks’ list of alternative download service Emusic, and has a featured position on the shelves in Fopp (that’s a popular music store in London for those of you who aren’t aware.)
So what makes ‘Black Sands’ different? And why have I featured it? Well in the saturated market of minimal mood music, ‘Black Sands’ comes across as actually very deep and complicated. As many people reviewing this album on the web have mentioned, ‘Prelude’ sets Bonobo’s pace with direct strings that strike a note of nostalgia. It is a strange song and lasts only 78 seconds. In that time though, it makes a serious, wilful stamp of authority before being joined by the electric beats of ‘Kiara’. The whole album is a giant soundscape of foggy things; things you might have heard in dreams if only you didn’t forget them. At worst, the work is intriguing and at best, hypnotic.
Bonobo- Kiara
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