Bonobo

Bonobo took downtempo out of the background and made it the main event. Born Simon Green in Brighton in 1976, he got his start making crate-digging trip-hop and nu-jazz in the early 2000s, fleshing out dusty breaks with sitar and strings. But rather than fading into the wallpaper, Green emphasised attention-grabbing melodies and textures, and by his 2010 breakout album, Black Sands, he had established a distinctive signature with his unusual fusion of broken beats, acoustic treatments and emotive vocal samples. With albums like 2013’s The North Borders, he kept expanding his sound, making the atmospheres more billowing, the melodies more heartbreaking and the grooves more visceral. Electronic dance music is key to Bonobo’s practice, as evidenced by the sleek house and techno of 2019’s fabric presents Bonobo mix. He told Apple Music that house music’s approach to looping is at the root of his compositional approach: “I just like the idea of repetition.”