Fox Theater

Fragments is the most emotionally intense record that Bonobo – aka Simon Green – has ever had to make. It’s no surprise that it’s also his masterpiece. The album features Jamila Woods, Joji, Kadhja Bonet, Jordan Rakei, O’Flynn and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Born first out of fragments of ideas and experimentation, the album ultimately was fused together in a burst of creativity fueled by both collaboration and Green’s escape into the wild.

Full of tension and release on both an intimate and an elemental scale, Fragments is truly a record for our times. But there were times when it felt it would never happen.  Where previously Green had always written on the move, this time he had to fight to get it out, in isolation, as the world changed around him.  He started to pull back into himself – and for the first time, crucially, he wasn’t writing new music as he travelled. He was also wrestling with feelings he found hard to express. But slowly, he found inspiration as he sought refuge in the great expanses of wild nature outside his adopted home of Los Angeles.  “Finding the places that were alien and unique and awe inspiring,” he says, even if that meant escaping on a solo voyage to Death Valley on what would turn out to be the hottest day in its history.  His dive into modular synthesis, and collaboration with a wide array of artists brought the album into much sharper focus, notably Jamila Woods’ contribution to “Tides,” which quickly became the album’s centerpiece.

So Fragments is the sound of both struggle and isolation – personally and collectively – and of a surging, joyous return: a gorgeous reminder of how out of struggle and disillusionment, creativity and hope can emerge at the most unexpected moments.

One of the biggest names in dance music, Green’s career includes 3 Grammy nominations and playing to 2 million people for the tour supporting his 2017 album Migration. Migration also reached #1 on Billboard’s Dance album chart and hit Top Ten positions in several countries. He is also a favorite mainstage performer at the world’s greatest music festivals and has worked with Erykah Badu, Ólafur Arnalds and Jon Hopkins, and remixed artists including Michael Kiwanuka, Gorillaz, George Fitzgerald and London Grammar.

In 2015, William Phillips won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year, as a co-writer for Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me.’ “It’s an absurd compliment,” he says, “but my intention has only been to write music and work with great musicians.” Since then, Phillips has released three albums as Tourist — 2016’s ‘U’ and 2019’s ‘Wild’ and ‘Everyday’ — and several solo EPs. He’s also remixed Christine and the Queens, Churches, Deftones, Wolf Alice, Swedish House Mafia & The Weeknd and Sofia Kourtesis. In May 2022, his fourth album, ‘Inside Out,’ will be released on Monday Records. Growing up, Phillips fell in love with dance music: Goldie, Daft Punk and MJ Cole were favourites. In 1999, he started making beats on production software Reason; later, he taught himself piano by listening to his fathers pop records. It’s a process he put to the test in the Covid-19 pandemic. After hearing the devastating news that a friend had passed away, locked down with his phone, laptop and a keyboard, Phillips started writing ‘Inside Out.’ Though it came from grief, ‘Inside Out’ is tender and uplifting, with kaleidoscopic fragments of garage grooves and French filter house. After playing Coachella and Glastonbury, opening for Bonobo on tour and selling out two nights at Village Underground, Tourist is preparing a new live show that will make his dreams come true: to feel everything, with everyone, through dance music.