Amon Tobin - Out From Out Where
I love the way Amon Tobin's new record starts. You just fall into "Back from Space" as if someone just dropped the needle on the record in the middle of something. Bells and chimes swirl for a second before the scattered DSP blast of beats kicks in. The ride has begun ladies and gentlemen, please hold on to your seats.
Tobin's latest for Ninja Tune, Out from out Where, is a further excursion into dark and rhythmically complex territories. These are truly Tobin landscapes, vistas and terrains which have been structured and scored by a man whose passionate attention to detail and beat are unmistakable. Born and raised in Brazil, Tobin has several generations of the samba, bossa nova, and tropicalia burned into his cortex. Coupling those with a love of the jungle rhythms which have flowed out of the European continent, Tobin creates powerful tracks which are filled with funk and noise.
There are squelching beats, blasts of noise, samples culled from bicyle tires and fart noises, chimes and bells and water bottles, all permutated together into distinct structures which sound like leitmotifs and soundtrack themes for dark tales of the new millenium. "Proper Hoodidge" skips, scatters, squelches, and slouches along like the nocturnal sojourns of a dark outlaw of the neglected wharf district in some forgotten city. "Verbal" throws down a heavy beat and an acoustic guitar behind the scattered and cut-up vocal track from MC Decimal R, turning the hip-hop vocal into a chattering sample that provides the momentum for the track.
Actually, there isn't any part of this record I don't love. From the distorted breaks of "Chronic Tronic" to the psychedelic wave machine of "Hey Blondie" to the Cosmos-inspired opening of "Triple Science" (which, of course, is only the beginning of worm-hole style break beat ride) to the solitary footsteps of "Proper Hoodidge" Out from Out Where stuns and amazes me. Amon Tobin reaches high on his fourth record and easily clears the mark he was shooting for. This is nobody's jazz but his own and it is a sound that your brain will be eager to assimilate.
Amon Tobin
Ninja Tune [2002]
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