Artist

Bonobo

UK electronic artist Simon Green

Leeds, United Kingdom • b. 1976

Bonobo is a musician from Leeds, United Kingdom, active since 1976. Their discography on Gatefold includes 20 records.

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Albums tracked

127

In collections

1976

Since

Biography

Simon Green, known by his stage name Bonobo, is a British musician, producer and DJ based in Los Angeles. Bonobo's first album - 2000's Animal Magic - was released via Tru Thoughts before being picked up by Ninja Tune. It announced him as a serious talent; able to bring a musician's edge to electronic music, with all the freedom that skill allowed. His subsequent albums for Ninja, Dial 'M' for Monkey and Days to Come, developed his sensibility, won him fans across the globe

The Arc of Bonobo

The pivots — what forced Bonobo to reinvent.

The Brighton Beatmaker
Green cut his teeth in Brighton's late-nineties crate-digging scene, debuting with the Scuba EP and Animal Magic on Robert Luis's independent Tru Thoughts imprint. Armed with an Akai sampler and live basslines he played himself, he leaned heavily on smoky jazz breaks and mellow hip-hop grooves. You hear the raw simplicity in every tape-hiss-laden sample on Dial 'M' for Monkey, right before Ninja Tune lured him into a broader playground.
Live Instrumentation and Ninja Tune Ascent
The release of Days to Come in 2006 marked the moment Green pushed past loop-based beatmaking into full orchestration. Bringing in vocalists like Bajka and later building Black Sands around the soaring voice of Andreya Triana transformed his music from chillout-room soundtracking into symphonic, dynamic compositions. He stepped out from behind the DJ decks, recruited a touring live band with horns and real drums, and proved downtempo could hold a festival mainstage.
The LA Modular Era
Relocating from the UK to Los Angeles catalyzed the expansive sound of Migration and Fragments. Green embraced modular synthesis, pristine club-oriented four-on-the-floor rhythms, and global collaborations ranging from Ólafur Arnalds to Arooj Aftab. The crackle of dusty wax gave way to wide dynamic range, razor-sharp drum programming, and polished, widescreen dance tracks engineered for massive rooms.

Influences

Coldcut — Matt Black and Jonathan More pioneered the sample-heavy collage approach that defined Ninja Tune, the label they founded and eventually signed Green to. You hear their cut-and-paste ethos in how Bonobo stitches disparate world music breaks and jazz snippets into unified beats. Without Coldcut's blueprint for UK instrumental hip-hop, the entire British downtempo scene never leaves the basement.
A Tribe Called Quest — Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad's reliance on obscure, warm jazz samples directly informed Green's foundational production habits. The upright basslines and brushed snare loops on Dial 'M' for Monkey are straight out of the Low End Theory playbook. It taught Green to let the low-end groove breathe beneath lush, organic hooks.
Talk Talk — Mark Hollis's shift toward ambient jazz textures and deliberate negative space left a massive mark on Green's arrangement style. You hear that exact tension between silence, acoustic instruments, and room resonance on Black Sands. Hollis made minimalism feel heavy, and Green took extensive notes.
DJ Shadow — Endtroducing..... established the Akai MPC as a standalone storytelling tool, proving that an album made entirely of other people's records could hold monumental emotional weight. Green adopted that same sample-sourcing obsession for Animal Magic. The melancholy, atmospheric breakbeat style is rooted directly in Shadow's mid-nineties output.
Alice Coltrane — Coltrane's spiritual jazz, characterized by sweeping harp glissandos and hypnotic, repetitive bass figures, is a foundational texture in Green's catalog. Tracks like 'Prelude' and 'Noctuary' lift directly from her ethereal acoustic palettes and meditative rhythm structures. She showed him how to make acoustic instruments feel truly cosmic.