Altsounds - Bonobo - The Keeper (feat. Andreya Triani) [Single]

It’s Bonobo, so it’s click-sharping, hi-freqing claps and hats, sub-zero bass lines and a healthy dollop of tuned percussion. If you like trip-hop, you’ll definitely be familiar with Bonobo, a stalwart of both Ninja Tune and Tru Thoughts. Some of his albums have set benchmarks in what is admittedly a fledgling genre. This output also features soul-folkist Adreya Triana as the prerequisite lady voice that sounds like it’s the sexiest thing that could come from a low lit, smoke-filmed floor. The vocal arrangement is the best thing, not overly manipulated, but cleverly overdubbed to give it a defined texture of its own. Almost ten years to the day since his first release, however, and downtempo dancing is not the novelty it used to be. 'The Keeper' is the work of a competent expert, but offers no signal that Bonobo is forging ahead in a particularly new and exciting direction.

As is the trend with electronica acts, there’s no B side but instead an array of versions. The radio(-friendly) edit clocks in at three and a half minutes and is the most roundly constructed. There’s a bit more character to the album version, and the instrumental is strictly for 4am party background. The Redeyes remix is an unimaginative DnB offering, quite unlike the Grasscut Bitter Peace remix, which is perhaps a bit too off-kilter for its own good - certainly more re-imagining than remix.