Music
Bonobo: Why making music is like therapy
The LA-based British producer on nostalgia, working with Nick Murphy and his new album Migration.
Bonobo
© Press
When we jump on the phone with Simon Green – aka Bonobo – he's chilling at his label Ninja Tune's office in Los Angeles. Which is just as well, as the past several months has seen the English producer frantically putting the final touches on his sixth studio album, Migration, a lush, exotic and emotional body of work that draws inspiration from travelling around the globe – something Green spent almost three years doing off the back of his all-conquering 2013 LP The North Borders.
Now settled in LA – a city he shares with friends, contemporaries and collaborators like Four Tet, Caribou and Jon Hopkins (who added piano to the new album's opening title track) – Green is calmly awaiting the impending storm. Migration is his most-anticipated and hyped record to date, and a three-month tour of the UK, Europe and USA is less than a month away.
Ahead of the madness, we spoke with Bonobo about the formation of his new album, working with Nick Murphy (formerly Chet Faker) and the making of music as a therapeutic process.
Migration by Bonobo
© Press
The new album is finally out! How long has it been since you actually finished it?
A few months ago. It's always a bit of a race to finish an album. You think you're almost there, then the deadline gets closer, and all of a sudden you realise how much crucial work gets done at the 11th hour. The plan was to finish it and then go to Japan and be zen for a little bit, but it didn't get finished in time because I was waiting for some vocals to come through. So I wound up mixing vocals in a kimono in Kyoto.
Are you someone that can finish a track and leave it be? Or when you listen back on music you've made do you hear things and wish you could change them?
I know it's a bit of a cliché because people always say this, but nothing is ever really finished. But you have to accept that something is finished when it's finally out there, and people have it and are responding to it, otherwise you could end up making something forever. And some people do!
I know musicians that 'finished' a track two years ago and have been tweaking it ever since for no reason. A track can go in infinite directions, but you have to accept that it ends up being what it is – a document in time. It's the only way you can move onto the next thing.
I always seem to get labelled with the word organic but I don’t really know what it means
You programmed a special algorithm to create the album's title track, Migration. Can you tell us a little bit about how it works and the reasons behind it?
Yeah, I built it in Ableton. The idea was to have a sequencer repeat these really short harmonic loops, and then the algorithm would trigger the sequencer to randomly select the next thing, creating this random pattern. Then I had Jon Hopkins improvise on piano alongside the algorithm. So essentially you have a computer and a pianist improvising simultaneously and reacting to one another, and I used that to base the rest of the track around. I just wanted to try a different approach to working with loop-based music.
One of the most endearing and approachable aspects of your music is how well you merge organic and electronic sounds. Are you consciously trying to create that type of sound or does it just come naturally?
I always seem to get labelled with the word organic, but I don't really know what it means when you apply it to music. I'm not consciously setting out to make music that's electronic versus acoustic. I think ultimately my sound comes down to the samples that I use.
I come from a hip-hop background; that kind of MPC, cut-and-paste approach. So I'm always taking elements of live recordings and throwing them into a sampler – that's just the way I’ve always worked. And I've now expanded that into incorporating my own live instrumentation. So I guess it's more like using electronic methods to make non-electronic music. I think that's the best way of describing it.
A lot of the tracks on the album you were road-testing at your Output DJ residency in NYC. How did this process affect the outcome of the finished product?
That was a good way of getting to hear how a track sounds on a really big sound system, and also whether or not it works on a dance floor. It was a really nice testing ground to have while I was making the album. There were some tracks that didn't make it onto the record, and those decisions were made by how they worked – or didn't work, rather – in that environment.
My music has always been entwined with nostalgia
You DJ back-to-back with Nick Murphy sometimes, who also guests on the track No Reason. How did you two meet?
We began chatting on Twitter around 2013, when he was starting to come through. I started seeing his name around the place. We had a opening slot on my North Borders tour and he was super keen, so he joined us at the tail end of the tour for a few weeks around weird parts of America, in places in Louisiana and Texas. It was really fun times and we formed a connection during that tour. Since then we've been hanging in each other's studios during the recording process of our respective albums.
Are most of your vocal collaborations done with the vocalist working in the studio with you or do they send them to you?
Back when I was working on Black Sands and The North Borders I would always have the vocalists record in the studio with me, but because of the constraints of touring and how this record was made, I've had to adapt that process.
For example the track with Rhye [Break Apart], that started on a laptop on a flight from Miami to LA. I sent it to Rhye while he was on tour and he recorded a verse in a hotel room in Amsterdam, and then another the next day in a hotel room in Berlin. Then he came to my studio, where we did the mixdown. So that track was created in disparate parts of the globe over about a year.
With Nick [Murphy], we were working remotely and then I flew over to New York and we spent a weekend there working on No Reason. He spent a day writing lyrics, and the next day we went into the studio and banged it out. I know Nick really well, so it was an easy process, but sometimes it can be difficult to conjure up creativity with someone you've just met in a studio. So sometimes having them send you vocals works best. It just depends.
How do you know when a track requires vocals or should remain as an instrumental? And what about whether it should be a male or female vocalist?
You don't really know until you're halfway through the process. By the end of the first session you kind of get a feel for whether it could be a vocal track. Once that's in your head, you continue writing with that mind and start leaving space for them. Some tracks have a narrative of their own and just don't require vocals. As for the male or female thing, it's kind of instinctive, I guess.
Bonobo is preparing to tour his new record
© Press
Melancholic is a word that gets thrown around somewhat to describe your sound. Do you consider yourself naturally attracted to making music with that kind of a vibe?
I think my music has always been entwined with nostalgia. On a personal level, making music is like therapy, in a way. People engage with music in different ways, but when I'm making music it's a very introspective thing.
I was making this album whilst on the road, and traveling is an especially reflective, meditative time. I'm all about music coming from experience and where your headspace is at the time, so I find traveling and all the things that come with it – being tired, hungover or in an unfamiliar city – conducive to writing. Whereas if you're alone for months in a studio, then you've got nothing to feed your creativity with.
So if I've had a weekend of playing shows, being in three different cities and meeting a bunch of people, when I turn on my laptop the first thing that comes out is hopefully going to be really interesting.
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