Suwannee Hulaween 2021

Simon Green aka Bonobo is back with his sixth album – the masterful, magisterial “Migration” – is a record which cements his place in the very highest echelons of electronic music and beyond. By turns lush, manic, beautiful, melancholy, joyful, packed.. Bonobo’s last album, “The North Borders”, went Top 30 in the UK and was number 1 in the electronic charts in both the US and UK. In support, his 12-piece collective (over an 18 month period) played 175 shows across four continents and 30 countries, wowing a total audience of around 2 million people. In fact, Songkick reckoned him to be amongst the most travelled artists on the planet that year. The tour included two sell outs at the Sydney Opera House, an all-day festival at the Roundhouse culminating in a sold out show at Alexandra Palace (10k cap) plus a number of high profile festival slots. Over the course of five albums for the legendary label Ninja Tune, a myriad of tours, singles, remixes and production work for other artists, Bonobo has built a large, loyal and engaged global fanbase: over half a million album sales and over one hundred and fifty million streams on Spotify point to the levels of success achieved by this quiet, self-effacing man. Most recently, Bonobo curated an international series of Outlier events including a sold out all day festival at Tobacco Dock in London and further parties in Berlin, Madrid, Paris and New York. After the epic North Borders tour, Bonobo relocated once again, continuing his gradual move westward by laying down roots in Los Angeles. He had spent almost three years out on the road with no fixed home and on returning to New York, he found it a “noisy, stressful environment” and decided to try the other coast. All this – both the monumental live and DJ tours and his new home in a city full of people from somewhere else – has fed into what makes “Migration” such a special record. Drawing on both a new interest in found-sound and the “euphoric, spiritual moments” he experienced when playing his all-night DJ sets at his Output residency (where many of “Migrations” tracks were road tested) in New York and his Outlier events around the world, Green has placed the unstable, the heartbreaking, the often beautiful migratory life at the core of how he understands humanity, and hence how he understands music. Migration is to him, “The study of people and spaces,” he expands, “It’s interesting how one person will take an influence from one part of the world and move with that influence and effect another part of the world. Over time, the identities of places evolve.” It’s also true that the person will be changed. Green’s newest work is itself a statement of this change and growth.

Franc Moody’s sound is contemporary funk, awash with electronic inspiration, human touches, and throbbing grooves. Like Daft Punk and Jamiroquai before them, they draw from the sounds, styles and techniques of funk, disco and soul while simultaneously threading in electronic influences of the here and now. And over their short lifespan as a band they’ve shown a masterful knack for creating rich and textured bangers, like “Dopamine” and “Dance Moves” which have amassed more than 20 Million streams. Their hypnotic and free-form live show has garnered a cult following. Earlier this year they sold out London’s 1100 capacity ‘Heaven’, in the Summer played their debut at Glastonbury, took on thousands of festival goers in Germany and Pukkelpop in Belguim – and sold out their upcoming fall European dates in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris and Copenghagen and have now annunced their biggest show to date at the o2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, as well as their first US dates in LA, San Francisco, & NYC.

Over the last ten years, Mark Farina has built himself up to become one of the most sought-after DJs in dance music today. Though he is mostly recognized for his deep-house DJ prowess, it is Farina’ wide-ranging musical knowledge that helped shape the Mushroom Jazz series, a continuously mixed collection of down-tempo, dance-floor jazz for the turntablist generation. A mix-tape made over eight years ago was the project’ original seed – a similarly-styled tape of jazz tunes that articulated a mellower counterpart to the up-tempo “Acid Jazz” movement of the day.,Farina’ “Mushroom Jazz” sound subsequently became popular through a long-running San Francisco club called Jazid Up, then through various Mushroom Jazz clubs thrown domestically and abroad.,Farina began his DJing career at the age of 15, inspired by the strong house and dance music scene pulsating in Chicago’ underground. Along with long time friend and DJ partner, Derrick Carter, Farina cut his teeth on the college radio airwaves of Northwestern University’ WNUR every Friday night for 2 years. Farina has released one album, Mood.,(Nettwerk UK Records, under the name Symbols and Instruments), and several other mix projects including Seasons (Domestic Records), United DJs of America (DMC) and Imperial Dub’ compilation (Imperial Dub) in addition to the Mushroom Jazz series and his mix on OM Records’ “San Francisco Sessions’” debut.

Sonny Moore, better known as electronic visionary Skrillex is part of a new generation of artists that refuse to be restricted by preconceived notions or outside expectations. After the successful independent releaseof “SCARY MONSTERS AND NICE SPRITES”, it became Skrillex's first release on Big Beat Records. Following its release on Beatport, the 9-song EP dominated the charts on the site, with the title track claiming the site’s #1 slot (the first time a dubstep track has ever done so). Aside from the immediate success of “SCARY MONSTERS AND NICE SPRITES,” Skrillex has also made a name for himself as a highly sought-after remixer. He’s already produced officially commissioned remixes for such A-list artists as the Black Eyed Peas (“Rock That Body”), Lady Gaga (“Bad Romance” and “Alejandro”), and La Roux (“In For The Kill”). Skrillex stands not only at the vanguard of electronic dance music, but the perpetually evolving new music industry as a whole.