Bonobo marks 25 years with 'Distance In Static' and a rebuilt live show
Bonobo announced 'Distance In Static' on June 9, 2026: a 14-track album due September 11 on Ninja Tune, landing on the project's 25th anniversary. Guests include Arooj Aftab, Joy Crookes, Nilufer Yanya and Ichiko Aoba, and a new live show tours North America from November 5.
Twenty-five years into the Bonobo project, Simon Green is closing a chapter the way he opened it: with a record that treats electronic music as a band sport. 'Distance In Static', announced June 9, arrives September 11 on Ninja Tune, his first full-length since 2022's Fragments.
The guest list reads like a quietly assembled festival: Arooj Aftab, Joy Crookes, Nilufer Yanya, Ichiko Aoba, Nicole Miglis of Hundred Waters, Aanya Martin and Kanako Yamamoto. Lyrics slide between English, Urdu and Japanese, with historic Iranian samples and guzheng recordings threaded through 14 tracks. Sessions ran through Los Angeles, Tokyo and London, with a long stretch completed at Neil Young's Broken Arrow Ranch in California.
Lead single 'Me And You' is the club-facing tell, already road-tested at roadblock pop-up DJ sets in London and Paris before the announcement. The live production is new too, designed by Pierre Claude, whose stage work spans Air, Gesaffelstein, Phoenix and Caroline Polachek. A 21-date North American run opens November 5 at Emo's in Austin and closes December 5 and 6 at Brooklyn Paramount.
Green has hinted this could be the final Bonobo album delivered in this format. "It's really about me redefining how to be a musician from here," he said. If this is the last lap, it is a confident one: a quarter-century project still booking new rooms and still pulling new voices into the fold.