Bonobo opens his North American Distance In Static Live tour at Emo’s Austin on Thursday, November 5 — first night of the run. Simon Green has been pretty explicit that this is the last time he tours in the format he’s spent 25 years refining. Green has done five nights at Royal Albert Hall in this configuration. He’s choosing to start its final chapter on East Riverside, in a 1,700-capacity room in Austin.
About Bonobo
Simon Green has been making records as Bonobo since the late 1990s, building one of the more quietly influential catalogs in UK electronic music. Migration (2017) and Fragments (2022) both cracked the UK top ten; he’s earned BRIT and Grammy nominations and collaborated with Damon Albarn and Erykah Badu along the way. His work lives somewhere between downtempo, ambient, and club music, depending on which way you tilt the record.
Distance in Static, out September 11 on Ninja Tune, is the capstone. Fourteen tracks recorded across Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, and Neil Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch in California. The album features Arooj Aftab, Joy Crookes, Nilüfer Yanya, Ichiko Aoba, Nicole Miglis of Hundred Waters, and Aanya Martin, with lyrics in English, Urdu, and Japanese. Historic Iranian samples and guzheng recordings sit alongside Green’s meticulously processed instrumentation. Lead single “Me and You” is the most club-forward thing Green has put on record in years — four-on-the-floor, road-tested at DJ pop-ups in London and Paris before it even had a name.
Green’s framing is unambiguous: “It’s probably the last go-around the track in this format. I don’t know what that will look like just yet, but it’s really about me redefining how to be a musician from here.”
About the Venue
The Distance In Static Live production is designed by Pierre Claude, whose visual work spans Air, Gesaffelstein, Phoenix, and Caroline Polachek — a résumé that signals Green is treating this as a proper production event, not a club run. Emo’s Austin, 1,700 capacity on East Riverside, is large enough to deploy the full visual concept and intimate enough that Bonobo’s atmospheric details don’t dissolve into the room. Austin opens the run before the tour heads to Los Angeles, Toronto, Chicago, Vancouver, and Montreal.
Tickets
Presale for Distance In Static Live begins June 11 at 10 a.m. local time. General on-sale is June 12 at 10 a.m. Doors at Emo’s Austin are at 7:00 PM. Get tickets.