Without meaning to sound hyperbolic, fabric presents Bonobo is a really big deal. For starters, it was a really big deal that fabric decided to end its original mix series. Fabriclive and fabric were, of course, among the best-loved, most influential and longest-running DJ mix series of all time. Those iconic silver CD tins were the way many people discovered dance music. fabric presents is also a big deal because of changes at the club. The weekly programme has been significantly diversified, with new event series such as Forms, nights curated by individual artists, and Craig Richards no longer playing every Saturday. This new mix series will apparently aim to reflect some of these changes. And it's also a big deal because, well, it's fabric. The club turns 20 this year. Over the past two decades it's navigated extreme ups and downs, but has remained central to London's club scene, the biggest and most competitive dance music market in the world.
Your view on the choice of Bonobo for the first edition of fabric presents may depend on your relationship with fabric itself. According to Resident Advisor, Simon Green has played at fabric only once before (in October 2018), and his style of mellow, mainstream-leaning house and electronica hasn't been a regular feature at the club. It's easy to imagine older fabric heads, who know the club as an early adopter of tech house, minimal and new UK club music, finding him a strange fit. Viewed from a different angle, though, Green represents new ground for fabric. He's an artist with broader appeal than most fabric regulars, representing a sound less esoteric and more musically rich.
Green wastes very little time in showing exactly this. The first chunk of the mix is an explosion of melody, instrumentation and good vibes. It's almost too much. There's a noticeable key clash in the mix between Alex Kassian's "Hidden Tropics" and Âme's 2004 track "Nia" that shows a DJ doing too much too quickly. "Nia" is a rousing house music classic, but its execution here feels rushed. Plenty of the tracks Green selects have a "more is more" attitude—more melodies, more percussion, more sunshine—that both helps and hinders the mix. "Nia," for example, is followed by Durante's "Maia," a pretty synth-led number that smartly chills things out. With the introduction of an extra synth line, though, it becomes drunk on its own sense of grandeur.
The mix is at its best when Green deviates more between light and dark, a balance he attains nicely towards the end. The greater contrast helps a track like Dan Kye's vocal-led "Focus" feel extra deep and soulful, and Barakas's "Roach," which comes next, sound especially rude and shady. R. Lyle's "Perpetrator," a sort of broken techno cut with cascades of strings—one of the many unreleased tracks on the mix—also benefits from being next to Laurent Garnier's loved-up remix of Rone's "Mirapolis." There's little on the mix that's more than a couple years old, but the strength of two tracks near the end show this may have been a mistake. Nepa Allstar's "The Way," a bubbly 2001 broken beat track, and John Beltran's "Collage Of Dreams," a pristine 1996 ambient piece, are both very sick in very different ways.
fabric presents Bonobo hangs together a little awkwardly, with the control of energy at times misjudged. Still, there are plenty of ear-catching moments. Dance music fans who prefer upbeat moods should find plenty to like, and the availability of the full individual tracks, a new move for fabric, is a bonus. The reality in which fabric finds itself is that it might need to piss off some people as it develops new directions—the choice of the next DJ, whose mix comes out three months from now, should be very interesting.
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