Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms is densely packed out, especially by the time I turn up after a meeting at 9.20pm. Earlier on, I found out that tonight’s Bonobo gig was sold out and you couldn’t get a ticket for money – but you could with love from the Ninja Tunes label! Big up James for the extra guestlist space, we massively appreciated it!
A plethora of instruments litter the small stage. Green comes on with eight musicians and spends the next 90 minutes recreating the spectacular sonic soundscapes that he’s known for with a nifty concoction of samples and instrumentation. Tracks from his new outstanding album Black Sands bounce across the walls with grace and tenacity. The nintuplet alternates from the blissed out, jazzy overtones of Stay The Same and The Keeper to the addictive hip-hop funk of We Could Forever with ease. They succeed in taking us all on the journey, with a dancing moshpit forming right at the front of the crowd. Weird! But good.
The result is so flawless you don’t notice an element that’s missing
Green himself stays firmly on the bass guitar and keyboards – the ones that work, that is. His other keyboardist sits grimly at the side of the stage as Bonobo makes several apologies for technical difficulties. It’s crazy but I didn’t notice any difference whatsoever. He’s assembled a stellar troupe of musicians for this tour and the result is so flawless that you wouldn’t notice an element that’s missing.
In fact, recreating all of these dense nuances of sound live shows a surprising level of dedication. Lesser artists, especially DJs, might replace most instruments with samples, but like his new album, the Bonobo live experience has evolved into a tightly focused torpedo of organic vibes falling over one another to seize your attention. Vocalist Andreya Triana adds a cool sultry overtone to Eyes Down but this girl has a truly dynamic edge, as she proves on a layered looped solo harmony.
Credit to Bonobo for banishing horrific Jethro Tull’s hippy trippy flute from my memory
The flute takes centre stage a fair few times. Embarassingly, the last time I saw a flute onstage was at a Jethro Tull show (definitely not my choice) and the instrument continues to haunts me in hippy trippy, airy fairy nightmares. Amazingly though, this lot make the flute sound genuinely funky – all credit to Bonobo for banishing those horrific visions of the ‘Tull from my memory.
Living up to the name, there’s a bit of monkeying around with some wild freestyle drumming and random sax jams to close. Even fighting technical difficulties, tonight’s show was a complete success. There’s obviously nothing a little sprinkling of Bonobo’s monkey magic can’t overcome.
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Related posts:
- Miike Snow: Live Review, Nottingham Rescue Rooms, 10 February 2010
- The Futureheads: Nottingham Rescue Rooms, 27 April 2010
- Frankmusik: Live Review, Nottingham Rescue Rooms, 4 November 2009
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(4.50 out of 5)