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In 2013, Simon Green - aka Bonobo - put the contents of his New York apartment into storage and went to tour his fifth album, The North Borders. Eighteen months later, he landed in Los Angeles with a suitcase and no home. Migration, the album born from that experience, addresses the British musician's own peripatetic life, while making the issue of human migration intensely personal.
Migration is a natural progression for Green. Since his 2000-released debut Animal Magic, Bonobo's music has won acclaim for its fusion of global sounds: tracks that flit between jazz and Afrobeat, mixing the looping bells of Indonesian gamelan with thudding European electronica.
"It's to do with the idea of geography, of the displacement of people," says Green, 40. Here he talks to WIRED about roots, mass movement and taking his studio around the world.
WIRED: How did the theme for Migration emerge?
Simon Green: Towards the end of touring The North Borders I had a lot of personal stuff going on - family members who had died - and I was feeling displaced. So when I finally stopped, I moved into this new place and the dust settled on me in quite an aggressive way. I was forced to think about themes such as identity, what home is, where you're from, the movement of people and the effect they have on the environment. I spent time in the wilderness, in the mountains and the desert. When those themes began to develop and take shape, the idea of the whole record began to emerge.
How did being in LA, away from home, inform the music?
People think about LA as being sunny and relaxed, but there's a darker side to it. There's people living in tents under bridges in their thousands. The culture almost encourages you to look the other way. I haven't seen that kind of poverty since being in places like Mumbai. It's right there, but a kilometre away you've got the mansions in Beverly Hills, people riding around in convertible cars with poodles on the back shelf. You have to take some sort of responsibility for that, you have to acknowledge it, but sometimes you're encouraged not to. That side of LA really gets to you.
You produce electronic music, but you tour with a 12-piece acoustic band. How do you translate what you record in the studio into what's played live?
I work with samplers, not banks of drum machines, so I know that if I play a guitar line into a sampler then [a musician] can play it at the other end. But a lot of the time, I play a part once, then I completely forget what it was. I have to learn my own music after I've made it, to translate it on to a stage. It's almost like I'm my own covers band.
Do you gravitate towards one more than the other?
You really need one to feed into the other. If I'm home for a month and I'm just in the studio working every day, I need something to feed on. I need to gain something that's going to inspire me. So if I go out for a weekend, I go touring and I'm up for three days, my mind is stimulated and the first thing that I do when I get back will be the best thing that I do for weeks.
How much do the live and studio versions inform each other?
They have two very different spaces in which they exist. The live show is more about my music and is more of an immersive, visual experience, whereas DJing is more about the dance. The focus isn't on my performance, it's about the whole room: how I build a set, how I tell a story over the arc of two hours.
What about the show's visual aspect?
I come from a film background as I studied film at art school. So I have an idea and I'm working with Strangeloop [David Wexler] in LA. He designed Flying Lotus's show and works with everyone from The Weeknd to Pharrell [Williams]. He heard the record from the studio very early, so he's been involved in the process for a long time.
Do you find that technology has liberated you creatively?
I've never gone into real studios. Every record I've made, I've mixed and engineered at home. I've got bits of hardware at home, including a few synths, but this is the first time I've made the whole record on a laptop. That's enabled me to flesh out ideas quickly. In 2014, I made The FlashlightEP entirely on the road. I never went into a studio - it was made on headphones.
Migration is out on January 13 through Ninja Tune
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
