Various Artists

Late Night Tales and Bonobo were pretty much made for each other, it just took them a while to both realise it.  Stepping forward into the compiler’s spotlight is Simon Green – aka Bonobo – a musician, producer and DJ perfectly suited to soundtrack an evening spent reclining to some parallel beats.  Wrapped in delicately programmed drums, Green’s music is at once both sombre and reassuring.  If what comes out the other end is the music of Bonobo, then this is the fuel that keeps the engine running: soul, jazz, classical, pop, funk, leftfield, rock.  Pianos and brass are abundantly present.  Our ivories are warmed and tickled by the classic, Bill Evans, and new school, with Matthew Bourne’s mournfully beautiful ‘Juliet’ and Dustin O’Halloran’s ‘An Ending A Beginning’.

The brass section comes courtesy of Menehan Street Band’s jazzy ‘The Traitor’, ‘Flipside’ by the Hypnotic Brass Band. Exclusives include YouTube sensation ‘One Thing’ by Peter & Kerry.  Not only that, but there’s Bonobo’s special LNT cover version, a brilliant reading of Donovan’s ‘Get Thy Bearings’.  As the light dims, the unsettling sounds of Lapalux or maybe even Shlomo pierce the misty evening air, before giving way to the ethereal splendour of Eddi Front’s ‘Gigantic’ or even Nina’s paean to an imagined rural idyll ‘Baltimore’.