Bonobo & Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Heartbreak (EP) - 45RPM Vinyl

“Heartbreak” lands like a love letter folded into a club classic. Bonobo and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs teamed up in 2020 for this two-track release, and it did the rounds on 12-inch not long after, carrying “6000 Ft.” on the flip. It came out on Outlier, Bonobo’s own imprint in partnership with Ninja Tune, which already tells you the aim. This wasn’t built for background listening. It was built for a system.

The hook is a cheeky and affectionate lift from Class Action’s “Weekend,” the 1983 New York disco staple sung by Christine Wiltshire and closely tied to Larry Levan and the Paradise Garage. That single chant of I can’t take the heartbreak gets chopped into a propulsive mantra, a kind of sly wink to the history of dance music without leaning on nostalgia. The sample is the spine, but Bonobo and TEED don’t just loop their way to a drop. They carve space around it. There is a clipped kick, a rubbery bass pulse that swells then tucks back, and percussive ticks that feel like hands on a club wall. Little synth flares flicker in and out, so when the vocal runs hot the room feels like it’s expanding with it.

Bonobo has always excelled at texture and pacing, but he usually folds that into widescreen downtempo. Here he keeps it lean and club-forward. You can hear TEED’s instinct for punchy rhythm and bright, aerodynamic synth lines nudging things along. The pair meet in the middle, trading polish for sweat. It is a track you notice first for how immediate it feels, then you catch the care in the details. The way the low end blooms after the snare fill. The moment the filters crack open just enough to mimic the lift of a dance floor when a DJ nudges the fader.

Flip to “6000 Ft.” and the mood tilts. The tempo relaxes and the drums go a bit breaksy. It has the sparkle of early morning, still driving but with a cooler head. A distant pad drifts behind short, clipped phrases, and the bassline scribbles a slower arc. It is the right foil for the A-side. If “Heartbreak” is the peak-time umbrella drink, “6000 Ft.” is the glass of water that keeps you there until the lights come up. As a pair they sketch out a neat map of where these two producers overlap, and where they let each other breathe.

There is a small history lesson embedded in all this. Drawing from “Weekend” pulls a direct line to the moment disco’s glitz melted into house and garage. Not a museum piece, more a reminder that club music lives best when it remembers where it came from. DJs responded accordingly, slotting it into sets that prized energy over genre purity. It carried enough weight to work in a sweaty basement, yet it is tidy enough to blast through on the radio on a Friday arvo. That balance is harder than it looks.

For the crate diggers, the “Heartbreak” vinyl pressing became a tidy pickup, with artwork that looks sharp lined up next to other Bonobo vinyl and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs releases. If you like that ritual of dropping the needle and letting the vocal loop pull you in, grab the 12-inch while you can. If you’re browsing a Melbourne record store, it is the one you flick past, then flick back for. And if you prefer to buy Bonobo records online, you will find it alongside a healthy run of Bonobo albums on vinyl, which makes it easy to bundle a classic LP with this club-minded single. Folks looking for vinyl records Australia wide won’t have trouble tracking it down.

What sticks after a few plays is how it dodges bloat. No bloated breakdowns, no syrupy nostalgia. Just a sharp idea, executed with restraint, and anchored to a vocal that has real history. That restraint is what makes the payoff hit. When the filter opens and the hi-hats tick a little harder, you feel the room lift. It is a small thing, but in dance music small things done right become big moments.

“Heartbreak” may not be an album, but it earns the kind of shelf space reserved for staples. The A-side brings the sugar rush, the B-side brings the glide, and together they make a tidy snapshot of two British producers tipping their hats to New York’s past while keeping feet planted in the now. If you are building a set, or just padding out a home stack, “Heartbreak” is the sort of release that keeps finding its way to the turntable. And if you search for Heartbreak vinyl, you will understand why so many people still chase the club feeling on wax.