Tagged early as a downtempo trailblazer, Bonobo’s success came quickly, with early tracks “Terrapin,” “Kota” and “The Sicilian” being licensed into oblivion for the early twenty-first-century rush to chill out. Apparently all the raving caused an inflated market for club casualties needing soothing, milquetoast compilations to wait out the hazy dusk. But Virgin Mega-trends aside, man-behind-the-simian-moniker Simon Green just kept on keeping on, releasing 2003’s “Dial ‘M’ For Monkey” on the revered Ninja Tune imprint, and proving his music was above the downtempo flotsam and jetsam he shared liner notes with. Hypnotically jazzy, rhythmically complex yet groovy, Bonobo soon evolved out of the studio into a complete live-band show, with multi-instrumentalist Green primarily manning the bass. And with vocalists featured on his Ninja Tune follow-up “Days to Come” (BBC DJ Giles Peterson’s 2006 Worldwide Awards winner for Album of the Year), Bonobo is primed for a bigger stage. He’s reportedly been working on completing the next album, so tonight might offer a glimpse of what the future may hold. Also active on the DJ front, Bonobo will play selector at the afterparty at Sonotheque. His sets tend to be heavier on the thump as he exhumes the broken beats, hip-hop breaks, jazz and funk underneath Bonobo’s strings and vocals and layers of atmosphere. Catch him live, or see him DJ—either way, this monkey shines. (Duke Shin)
July 12 at Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie, and then at the afterparty at Sonotheque, 1444 W. Chicago.
Brutal Finesse: A Preview of King Crimson at Ravinia There have been few new compositions from King Crimson these past two decades, but the live arrangements of songs from its catalog are often strikingly different than the recorded versions.
For “Want” of a Change: A Preview of Rufus Wainwright at Ravinia Park Rufus Wainwright isn’t the first singer-songwriter to reinterpret earlier work through an orchestral lens. And much of Wainwright’s third and fourth albums, “Want One” and “Want Two”—whose twentieth anniversaries are the prompt for this new tour—is fully scored. But when Wainwright hits the Pavilion stage at Ravinia tonight, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be behind him.
