Though I know I'm a bit late to the party on this one, the (relatively) new Bonobo album,
The North Borders, is amazing. It's just under an hour of dizzy, soulful trip-hop brilliance which dips just far enough into garage and formless downtempo to be interesting the whole way through. It's also something I doubt I would have listened to at all, much less enjoyed as much as I did, if I'd found it six months ago. The album's quality would probably have been lost on me if it had come out then, as at that point I mostly listened to music for the raw entertainment value. It's the classic case of an American teenager, recently recovered from being blindsided by the likes of Skrillex and Flux Pavilion, figuring out what exactly "serious" music means, why people enjoy it when there's far more interesting music out there, and whether he'd ever be like everyone else in liking it.
