After Being a Leading Force in Dance for Decades, Bonobo’s Switching Things Up for His New Album: ‘I Don’t Have to Keep Trying to Prove Myself’

For the past 26 years, Bonobo – the moniker for artist, producer and DJ Simon Green – has quietly shaped the sound of British dance music. While Fred again.. and Calvin Harris have made their mark in flashier style, Green’s journey has offered an alternative vision, but no less prestigious: Grammy nominations, his series of popular Outlier parties and seismic performances at venues like London’s Royal Albert Hall and the Sydney Opera House, all while remaining signed to an independent label, Ninja Tune.

Put that to Green, a softly-spoken presence, and he is fittingly understated. “I sometimes forget we did all that,” he says, speaking to Billboard U.K. from Ibiza, a quarter of a century on from his 2000 debut Animal Magic. “When you’re in those moments, you’re not really acknowledging them: you just think of the next gig or record.” Reflection is rare, particularly for an artist who has repeatedly innovated their sound. “There’s always a thought of: ‘Let’s just keep moving forward. What can we do next?’”

Green’s eighth LP Distance in Static, released Sept. 11, is a prime moment to take stock. The record possesses all that makes Green’s music such an outlier in the contemporary electronic space: thoughtful instrumentation, striking guest vocalists and forthright dancefloor bangers, a combination few of his contemporaries can match. The LP feels like a career-spanning collection of hits, despite featuring entirely new material – a “retrospective feel” that Green notes is “not a backwards-looking one.” He adds, “there are definitely nods to the other records but a broader palette to choose from.”

There’s the same lush orchestration as 2017’s Migration – the record that Green says he is most proud of – which earned him a Grammy nomination in the best dance/electronic category, and landed at No. 59 on the Billboard 200. The guest vocalists mirror the ambition of 2013’s The North Borders, which boasted a spot from Erykah Badu; this time, Joy Crookes, Nilüfer Yanya and Arooj Aftab lend their sultry tones.

The blend of club-ready heaters and jazz-infused, downtempo beats feel most reminiscent of his 2010 classic Black Sands, which saw Green break cover to become a must-see live act and set the standard for the scene’s recorded ambitions. Does Green agree that Distance in Static feels like a belated, quasi-sequel, even if he’s stumbled into it by accident? “I think that’s a good point,” he says. Tapping into these previous moments was fruitful, but he was wary that nostalgia can be an obstacle to innovation.

“Black Sands takes me back to a specific time in my life, and it’s the same for everyone,” he says. “A lot of people talk about [Black Sands] like it’s the one record that I made. But when people say, ‘Oh, I want you to make Black Sands again,’ I think what they really mean is: ‘Can you give me that part of my life back?’”

Distance in Static began much the same as all his records have: Green finding moments of inspiration, following the conclusion of a global tour that saw him perform at his biggest-ever venues. He temporarily moved to Tokyo, Japan, and split his time between there, London and L.A. Tokyo’s sprawling scale and diverse music offerings acted as a springboard for ideas and creativity. “You can feel very sort of detached there, in a really good way. It’s like, there’s anonymity, and you’re out of comfort cycles and into different ones.”

Green works alone, sketching ideas in hotel rooms, in his home studios and between DJ sets around the world. These ideas can come quickly — such as “Drift,” which he says was instinctual, and a result of not taking cues from anything other than “just what felt good on that day.” It reminds him of 2013’s “Cirrus,” his biggest song on Spotify with 108 million streams, and a highlight of his live sets — which was also an idea that “fell out with no resistance. I was sad [“Drift”] was done so quickly because I was having so much fun working on it.”

Distance in Static is full of these serendipitous moments. “Fire in Water,” the opening song to the record (which features Pakistani-American vocalist Arooj Aftab), “fell out of thin air” when a loop Green was testing on Ableton suddenly became the main hook to their collaboration. Joy Crookes’ turn on “Always On Your Side” was similarly painless when she returned a vocal take that required no changes, other than Green retooling the song around what she’d filed. “It felt like music should feel,” the British singer/songwriter tells Billboard U.K. via email. “It didn’t feel forced or impure; it just felt like two human beings who love doing what we do.”

Green is hopeful that listeners take time to absorb the record as a whole, a tough task in an age when attention-spans are dwindling and short-form social content is king. “I find the whole thing increasingly uncomfortable,” he says, regarding artists having to become social-first marketers. “I’m not going to try and do that and compete with those acts that are good at it, I’m just going to keep making music and hopefully people will find it.”

Little surprise, then, to learn that Green feels that the Bonobo project in its current cyclical format – record an LP, promote it heavily, embark on a lengthy global live tour – is coming to an end. “All I’ve known since I’ve started is being on this cycle of making an album, touring an album, trying to piece your life back together, and then just doing it again,” he says. “I’ve always been somewhere on this wheel, which is great and I’m super grateful for it… but I think it’s time to get off the wheel for a minute and engage with what I’m doing on my own terms.”

What does that look like in practical terms? “I love playing live, making music and DJing, but I want to do it in a way that’s a bit more comfortable and sustainable for myself. I don’t want to just do this every three years where we have this big album moment, and then tour ourselves into oblivion.” 

He hopes that the cycle break will allow him opportunities to record different types of music, potentially something more lowkey. Perhaps a “lo-fi folk record,” or a project that can exist as a studio venture and not have to be translated into a live performance. He wants to build on his work for movies and TV following his score for Adult Swim’s 2025 anime series Lazarus, which he says was one of the most rewarding challenges of his career.

Before all that, there is a large world tour kicking off in Austin, Texas (Nov. 5), and including dates at Los Angeles’ The Wiltern, the Brooklyn Paramount, and London’s Alexandra Palace. He’s collaborating with Pierre Claude, who has worked closely with Air, Phoenix and Gesafflestein to bring to life the “most visually immersive” show he’s ever done. This doesn’t necessarily mean employing a bigger LED screen and more musicians, but instead crafting a visual narrative that favors maximising lighting tricks and the architectural effects of the stage build. 

Green recently attended a gig by Underworld at a festival which featured a practical light sequence with a handheld torch that he found “quite simple, but really effective.” These kinds of practical tricks were “better than any kind of programmed effect I’ve ever seen.” Green continues, “A lot of it comes from practicality as well. The expense of touring is getting insane now, especially in places like North America, so a lot of the innovation comes from, what can we get away with? Like, how can we make things look cool with very little?” 

Distance in Static isn’t a farewell record — however, there’s certainly a feeling that a new path is emerging for Green. It incorporates all of the sounds and emotions he’s tapped into throughout his career and at peace with what comes next. “I don’t have to keep trying to prove myself internally or to anyone else at this point,” he concludes. “I can do just whatever feels right.”