Bonobo, has dropped two tracks from his forthcoming album Distance in Static, “Fire on the Water”, featuring Arooj Aftab, represents the emotional heart of the record, while “Drift” showcases its more club-focused leanings and arrives alongside an official video. To mark the release, Bonobo aka: Simon Green also drops a limited 12″ featuring “Drift” and “Memory Signal”, an unreleased track that has been a regular in his DJ sets. The vinyl is hand-numbered and stamped, enveloped, and sealed in black art paper.

The album was woven together across recording sessions spanning LA, Tokyo, London and beyond – with a significant portion of the record completed at Neil Young’s legendary Broken Arrow Ranch in California, where he holed up for several weeks earlier this year. A pivotal track to emerge from these Ranch sessions was the enchanting “Fire on the Water”, featuring Arooj Aftab, who travelled down from her NYC base to record what became a breakthrough moment during the album’s creation. Evolving, almost accidentally, from a rough acoustic guitar loop recorded while Green was testing studio inputs one morning. On hearing it, Aftab responded immediately, layering vocals in Urdu – the lyrics inspired by poetry from a close friend – to produce one of the record’s standout moments. “When that song happened, that’s when I could first see an album coming into shape,” says Green. “We were both like, ‘Oh, this is really special’.”

Speaking subsequently about the collaboration, Aftab shared: “I had the dreamiest time making this song with Simon in the Redwoods. He is a boyish joy and a beautiful soul. The lyrics, written by my dear friend Yasra Rizvi, live in that tender place where time keeps moving but desire remains. There can still be fire on the water.”

Distance in Static, which arrives September 11th on Ninja Tune, includes apearances by Joy Crookes, Nilüfer Yanya, Ichiko Aoba, Nicole Miglis (Hundred Waters) and Aanya Martin. Lyrics appear in English, Urdu and Japanese, while historic Iranian samples and guzheng recordings sit alongside Green’s own instrumentation. Green also announced a brand new Bonobo Live show – designed by Pierre Claude, known for his work with Air, Gesaffelstein, Phoenix, and Caroline Polachek – will be kicking off this November with a headline run across North America.

order Distance in Static by Bonobo HERE