Primates!
I have to say, this summer has felt a bit like getting punched in the gut repeatedly, and my emotional stores are near empty. So I have been coming home in the evenings, shutting the door to the world with a pair of headphones, lying on the couch with music all week. Mostly I’ve been trying to keep it chill, in an effort to relax and quiet a mind that won’t quit. This has meant a healthy dose of Simon Green’s project, Bonobo:
There is a good, though significantly darker remix of that track as well:
If ‘s voice can’t chill you out, nothing can.
Green is a talented DJ who, under the Bonobo moniker, puts out consistently good though never quite great electronic music with just a dose of hip hop, and occasionally bordering on dance, though always too chill to quite get there:
I’ve seen him live a couple times, and the shows were a lot of fun if you like DJ music. It was not at all like this, though:
The studio version of that, probably my favorite Bonobo track (Bajka!):
it’s the hip hop version of brunch house. what you might put on were you romancing a lady but not sure if she was into crazy stuff or just once downloaded a radiohead single. or if you need to sell people 11 dollar omelettes.
do you like tycho? i think he hits a similar mood but is more consistently great. (he’s also a bang up graphic designer)Report
Yeah, Bonobo is def. “consistently good though never quite great”. Kinda like Ninja Tune in general, actually.
Tycho is good on record but BORING AS HELL live.Report
i am not too surprised. or am i a little bit. but you cannot win them all.
ninja tune is basically a brunch house label, but with a lot more dreds.
some heresy: you know whom i never cared for? coldcut. they were always so beige.
also kid koala. i always felt like there was some west coast weed thing that instead of getting all math beats got all anime nerd cute overload math beats instead. i realize to the outside world that is a senseless distinction but i think you know what i mean.Report
I should clarify what I mean about Tycho. It’s by no means a bad show. It’s just that he puts a lot of effort into re-creating, exactly, in uncanny detail and pristine sonic fidelity, the records.
So you are standing there thinking, this is nice and all; but I could be on my sofa right now.
I saw him twice, thinking maybe I was just tired the first time, and nope.
I amassed a LOT of Ninja Tune for a little while in the ’90’s, but it wore thin really quickly, and probably the only NT artist I still reach for occasionally is Amon Tobin.
I hung onto a couple Kid Koala things just ‘cos they had neat packaging. But I haven’t played ’em in YEARS.Report
“ultimate chillaxability” would be a good theme if we ever had an ot mixtape contest.Report
Dead Can Dance.Report
I’ve actually been using a sort of “ultimate chillaxability” playlist, which in addition to Bonobo does include Tyco, along with Cillo, Joey Fehrenbach, General Fuzz, Rogue Audio, Stateless and Fog (more Ninja Tune), Jerome Isma-Ae, Balam Acab, Scuba, Trafik, Little People, Miwon, The Last Atlant, and some old school Tangerine Dream, along some others but I’m tired of scrolling. I suspect that a mixtape of most of these would put a lot of people to sleep.
Also, Dead Can Dance is a good addition.
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i dunno if people would fall asleep unless you went full robert rich.
i figure most folk use music as background noise anyway – so why not music designed explicitly as background? it can’t lose!Report
I sill giggle every time I hear archbishops called “primates”.Report