Happy belated 39th birthday,
Amon Adonai Santos de Araújo Tobin, or as most folks call you, simply
Amon Tobin. The Brazilian-born producer
first released music as Cujo, and has since moved on to his own name, with
five albums and a slew of EPs and singles released since 1997,
plus two video game
soundtracks, and
a film soundtrack. He also has
an EP of collaborations, side projects with
Joe "Doubleclick" Chapman as
60hz and
Two Fingers. And that's the overview ... (music samples a-plenty inside, or you could skip the chatter and
listen to much of Amon Tobin's discography streaming on his website).
Amon Santos de Araújo was born in Brazil on February 7, 1972, though he moved away from South America with his family, ending up in England. At some point he took his Irish stepfather's last name, and is now known as Amon Tobin.
It wasn't until he was in college that he started making music, signing to the now-defunct
NINEBARecords as
Cujo. Though there are
rumored early "ambient singles" for a mysterious HOS label, Amon Tobin's
first known release came out in 1995 (samples:
Curfew,
Lazy Daze,
Trespassing, and
Apollo), which had some of what would become his signature sound of dark, jazzy percussion, but also some definite influence from hip-hop. Within a year, his sound was more refined, and he really came into his own with the album
Adventures in Foam (
YT playlist - the actual first track is linked here as the playlist order is wonky). The album was re-released in the United States on the now-dead
Shadow Records label with a slightly different tracklist, including
Clockwork, an
almost exclusive track that was mis-titled therein as The Sequel, which is all-together a different track. The US edition also featured
drastically different cover art that wasn't approved by Amon Tobin, according to the notes from Ninja Tune with their re-re-release of
the album.
The work of Cujo got noticed by folks signed to Ninja Tune (
prev.,
twice), and he started his career as Amon Tobin with the
Creatures EP in 1996, the title track to be featured on his 1997 album,
Bricolage (streaming). This album has been likened to
a living jungle of sound, with urban moments creeping out; Pitchfork reviewers gave the album a perfect 10, putting it "
[u]p there with classic albums by Quincy Jones and Miles Davis." The abstract album art was
taken by Strictly Kev (aka DJ Food) when he was on tour, capturing
"Olympic Iliad" by Alexander Liberman. Those photos were the stock material that was later tweaked for a couple related singles and EPs.
The next year, a prolific Tobin releases his 3rd album,
Permutation (streaming). The album features
a number of nods to David Lynch within the album, and
Tobin says he worked from more freeform rhythmical patterns and styles of jazz versus his prior bent towards the Brazilian sounds. In that interview, he also mentions making new breaks out of 16 or so percussion samples, giving his work a much more live feel than typical sample-based music of the period.
Strictly Kev says the album art comes from "some kind of air conditioning unit" and "a badly lit neon sign somewhere inside a venue", layered and tweaked, with some 1960s architecture magazine imagery added for good measure.
Tobin's fourth album, the third to his name, came out in 2000.
Supermodified (streaming) is
largely considered Amon Tobin's most "accessible" work to date (
for good or for ill), complete with a key track (4 Ton Mantis) being made into
a music video and getting used
in ads. Again, Strictly Kev found himself using an
Alexander Liberman sculpture as
the basis of the album art, brainstorming with Amon Tobin about the permutations of an image based on the Photoshop effects and layers applied.
In 2002, Ninja Tune re-re-released that first Cujo album, Adventures in Foam,
six more tracks than the original NINEBARecords version (
The Brazilianaire,
4 or 6 (sample)),
Mars Brothers,
Popsicle,
The Light (fan-made vid), and
The Sequel (MySpace)). Amon Tobin moved from UK to Canada,
living in the business district of Old Montreal to avoid noise complaints. Along with changing locations,
his music-making process was changing, too.
"When I first started, I used to throw out a lot, but maybe because I've now got more control of my sounds, now the music is closer to the original idea I had in the beginning. Before I'd find a sound and just put it with another sound to see what happens. Sometimes it would lead somewhere and sometimes it wouldn't, whereas now that random element is somewhat tapered, so the ratio has improved, but I might throw away maybe one in four tracks."
The 2002 album,
Out from Out Where (streaming), was the product of this new process, resulting in "
post-modern science fiction [that] stands heads above the rest." Accompanying the album were two music videos, one for
Verbal (director:
Alex Rutterford) and
Proper Hoodidge (director:
Corine Stübi). The artwork by Strictly Kev is
sourced from unbuilt Gundam robots that are then re-assembled into new forms on his computer (Kev confessed to being a long-time
Gundam fan.)
Following Out from Out Where, there was an odd little in-betweener in 2003:
Verbal Remixes & Collaborations (streaming). Verbal, included on OFOW, is a track featuring the chopped-up vocals of a mysterious MC, something
Tobin said was inspired by similar work by Prefuse 73. It is then fitting that
Scott Herren,
Mr. pre-fusion 1973 himself, is included amongst the remixers of Verbal. On the other side was the second serious go at collaborations from Amon Tobin. The first was
five collaboration tracks as Cujo, released on NINEBARecords in 1997. This time around, there are another five collaborations: two with Ninja Tune artists Kid Koala and Bonobo,
Canadian turntablist P-love,
Hip-Hop legend Steinski, and
UK-based producer Doubleclick. 4 of the 5 collabs would be one-offs, but Amon Tobin would continue to work with Joe Chapman, aka Doubleclick (more on that later). As for the artwork,
that was a collaboration, too, with work by Kev and
Doug Bowden.
The next year, Ninja Tune released the fourth
Solid Steel mix-CD (
YT playlist with 9 of the tracks played), the first to be recorded from a live set (with minor after-the-fact edits for licensing reasons, though
the original promo version is supposed to be true-to-form).
Tobin toured using Final Scratch, leading to
cross-
promotion (though he talked positively about being able to
play his own blends without needing
dubplates pressed for tour,
some of his comments about touring with "digital" decks aren't great pitches for the product).
Also in 2004, Amon Tobin was contacted by the video game company
Ubisoft's
Montreal branch to create a soundtrack for the third
Splinter Cell game,
Chaos Theory. Of
the score (streaming), Amon Tobin said "I tried to write the music as if it was a score for a
Dario Argento movie."
Tobin confessed that he wanted to make a soundtrack for a long time, and was surprised that the first one would be for a video game. He brought together
a cast of musicians from around the world to
improvise in-studio. This score also marked the first
surround-sound release from Tobin.
His next album was
announced in May 2006 as a work-in-progress. That announcement included
the first of two
teaser trailers for what was initially planned to be sourced solely from field recordings of all sorts, from machinery to insects. But the plan changed, and the album in it's final form included work by
Kronos Quartet, as
mentioned in another update on the album in November '06. The album,
Foley Room (streaming), leaked online three months early, which
Amon Tobin thought spelled disaster for the album. Regardless of the early leak,
the design was detailed as ever, maybe moreso, as the both the CD and vinyl versions were to include a DVD that featured a
making-of documentary. (Bonus tidbit: Amon Tobin's "logo" started as a typeface made by graffiti artist
She One.)
If nothing else, those early downloads
decreased his interest in making a surround sound version of the album, though the
support tour featured 7.1 surround-sound DJ sets. One of those shows was going to be his second Solid Steel mix, but
the show was too hard to clear for licensing, and was instead
released online as a freebie (
also available streaming online).
In June 2008, Tobin started a new series of singles with
Delpher, which would later be released collected as
Monthly Joint Series (streaming).
2009 marked the release of an on-going collaboration with Doubleclick, and Tobin's first work with vocalists:
Two Fingers (streaming). The duo
came together over common interests in jungle and the kind of beats Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and the Neptunes were making. But it still sounds very much like something from Amon Tobin's mind.
That was also the year that
the soundtrack to inFamous along with
composers James Dooley, Mel Wesson, and electric violinist Martin Tillman (
sample Tobin track).
In 2010, a few more Amon Tobin collaborations came out of the woodworks. One was work with an new face,
Eskmo (prev), for a track called
Fine Objects (streaming single). Another was
for a feature-length dance film called
Pina, a film for
Pina Bausch by
Wim Wenders. Amon Tobin had earlier
created original music for
choreographer Kimberly Cooper's
Wow and
Flutter. Also in 2010: a Tobin-scored sci-fi short Carl Rinsch called '
The Gift' (YT HD) was posted online (more background on the video
on Slashfilm).
What's next? Amon Tobin's next album
has been mastered, and will be released on May 9th, a new Two Fingers album is in the works, as well as a an album of remixes of his Chaos Theory soundtrack work.
Bonus Bits:
* If you think you heard a Tobin track in a commercial, check his
Scores and Music Placement list
*
Interview video in 4 parts
*
Amon Tobin on DJing, including a move he learned from Paul Oakenfold
* And if you want to dig about, you can find some odd gems of
freebies from Tobin's old site, many of which are listed on Discogs on the
AmonTobin.com "label" (Example:
Slayer boot, which is a variation of the
Angel of Theft one-sided record).
*
Piero Scaruffi bio/discography, and the source of the title
Awersome post
posted by lalochezia at 5:34 PM on February 20, 2011 [2 favorites]