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Some artists travel the world to sell records; others travel the world to make them. Bonobo — the British producer born Simon Green — clearly belongs to the second group. On Friday, September 11, 2026 he released “Distance in Static,” his eighth studio album, on Ninja Tune: a record pieced together across several continents and built like one long journey, where every track seems to arrive from a different time zone.
An album made on the move
Four years on from “Fragments,” the album that pushed his audience well beyond electronic-music circles, Simon Green hit the road again. “Distance in Static” was shaped in studios spread across several continents, with one striking stop along the way: Neil Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch in California, where part of the sessions were recorded. The title says a lot about the project — distance, remoteness, the crackle of a signal travelling across the world to reach you.
That way of working is no globetrotter’s whim. For some twenty years, Bonobo has built a music of textures: string washes, organic percussion, deep bass and voices treated like instruments. By gathering atmospheres from all over the map, he feeds that vocabulary with sonic material you simply won’t find in a single London studio. You can hear that craftsman’s patience on every track, where nothing feels left to chance and each transition seems carefully weighed.
It also fits a career that has quietly grown from a bedroom project on Ninja Tune into one of the label’s biggest live draws, without ever chasing an obvious radio hit. Where many peers reinvent themselves with each cycle, Green has instead deepened a single, recognisable world — and “Distance in Static” is the widest map he has drawn of it so far.
A cast of guest voices
The defining feature of “Distance in Static” is its guest list. Bonobo has always loved handing the microphone to others, but this time he takes the idea further than ever. You’ll hear Britain’s Joy Crookes, singer Nilüfer Yanya, Japan’s Ichiko Aoba, Pakistan’s Arooj Aftab, along with Nicole Miglis of Hundred Waters and the young Aanya Martin. Each brings her own language, vocal grain and background, turning the album into a kind of sung world tour rather than a simple run of features.
The first single, “Always on Your Side,” unveiled in early August with a video, sets the tone. Carried by Joy Crookes’s soulful voice, it moves on tiptoe, somewhere between nostalgic trip-hop and bedroom pop. Other tracks head for more rhythmic ground: “Talk to Me,” built around Nicole Miglis, leans into UK garage and 2-step — the London dancefloor styles Bonobo had never embraced quite so openly. Sequenced together, these songs breathe in and out, alternating hushed ballads with passages that could fill a festival field at dusk.
The familiar balancing act
Critics, for their part, are divided. Some praise a generous, expansive record, an invitation to step into a world; others wish Bonobo took more risks, as if he handled his own formula too well to ever truly put himself in danger. The complaint is nothing new, and it says more than anything about the expectations an artist of his stature now carries with every release.
Even so, “Distance in Static” confirms Bonobo’s singular place in the electronic landscape. Few producers can fill vast rooms with music this understated, most often played live with a real band on stage. Between the club, the concert hall and the headphone listen, Simon Green has found a rare balance: an eighth album that, without reinventing his method, proves once again that the wait was worth it.
Before these songs reach the stage, here is “Drift,” another cut from the record, in its official video.
