Bonobo – Black Sands

From the Chinese strings that kick off "Prelude," you know you're in for something special with Bonobo's BLACK SANDS. Even as that track segues into the electro thump of "Kiara," it never loses its sense of surprise and wonder. "Kong" slides into a sweet spot between jazz, hip-hop and electronic music, dense with instrumentation and ideas. But the real magic starts when Andreya Triana appears with the slow-burning "Eyesdown." Her trio of songs, including the heart-breaking "The Keeper" and the melancholy "Stay the Same," gives the album a breath-taking soul. That's to say that the instrumentals pale; far from it. The Spanish flair of "El Toro" or the fuzz-guitar groove and altered vocals of "All In Forms." The clarinet of "Animals" shows his adaptability with many instruments, in a Cinematic Orchestra-like jam, as the title track brings things down to a simple, string-driven waltz. Simply amazing.

Just got this album on CD, listened through on some speakers. Now listening again on headphones. Truly wonderful, the amount of detail and production value is just incredible.

The finest album of 2010. Fact. Bonobo's finest album? Definitely.

Every single track is outstanding, they all work and come together in one amazing album. It is so hard to pick the best tracks but the title track 'Black Sands' with it's almost mafia-esque sound (and indeed wouldn't sound out of place in some Mafia-based film somewhere) is my favourite Bonobo track ever. Eyesdown, 1009 and We Could Forever are also top notch.

A truly exceptional album, and one that I will be listening to for a long, long time. Buy it. Now.

Absolutely one of Bonobo’s best albums to date! Before I start I need to address the potential flood of Burial fan’s making ridiculous statements. They already smeared Four Tet’s new album. Burial didn’t invent anything about his style. He didn’t create dub step, he didn’t create the idea of chopping up vocals and changing pitch, etc. Burial just made it popular and there‘s nothing wrong with that but to say that other artists are “stealing“ his style is juvenile, so give it a rest. The songs I think would be accused of sounding like Burial are Kiara, Eyesdown, 1009, and All In forms. If anyone tries to make those accusations then take a listen to Bonobo’s past; Sleepy Seven (2000), Terrapin (2000), and Ketto (2006) are just some examples of vocal manipulation and Recurring (2006) an example of beat structure. In this album Bonobo brings the beats a lot harder than in previous albums. Beats pump in the foreground instead of the intricate background beats of his past works. Bonobo also uses an interesting beat structure in some songs that sounds like dub step but not in a traditional sense, more like an inspired derivative of dub step beats. Song’s like Eyesdown have a dub step type wobble that’s more subtle than you would get in a good grimey dub step song , maybe one that edges minimalism. Some of the songs also have that strange sound that pulses and fluctuates creating a trippy feeling of audible depth that, for a lack of a better example or term, sounds like what Flying Lotus has done, listen to Tea-Leaf Dancers which also features Andreya Triana. With such extreme changes in sound Bonobo still manages to keep it his own and references his past in songs like Kong, El Toro and Animals. Even in the midst of the most hardcore songs, like 1009, you can hear the familiar production skills and melodies that have defined Bonobo. No one can deny that Bajka stole the show on Bonobo’s last album so it’s nice to see the two main vocal tracks further down on the tracklist, making it easier to absorb the instrumental songs first. Just like Bonobo made Bajka’s voice shine, he does the same for Andreya Triana and she loves him back with a sweet and mellow voice that fuses nicely with Bonobo’s sound aesthetics. This album in summation is all of his past (Animal Magic, Dial M For Monkey), his not so distant present (Days To Come), and his future sound (Black Sands) all mixed and blended together to make one hot, mellow, intense, dramatic work of pure production genus. Not an album to miss and not one to ever be forgotten. If it takes another 4 to 6 years for Bonobo to make another album, I will gladly wait if he makes another masterpiece like this one.