Bonobo - The Northern Borders [ZEN195]

Label: Ninja Tune 

A sense of déjà vu haunts The North Borders, UK producer Simon Green’s fifth studio album as Bonobo. It’s almost 15 years since he first appeared with the shy-footed but prescient “Terrapin”, which later appeared on his debut album Animal Magic and helped him find a name at the forefront of the downtempo electronica scene that bubbled up in the late 90s and early 2000s (a period when ambient pop albums like Air’s Moon Safari and Royksopp’s Melody A.M were scoring top 10 positions in the UK charts). Drawing on the noodling notions of jazz and trip hop, downtempo became the clubbing generation’s default after-hours music: the sound of a thousand compilation CDs made for slinging on after the club or soothing heads the morning after the night before.