Supermodified

My apologies to my readers out there that were awaiting a new blog post.  I have been extremely busy and a little rundown in my listenings, but I am hoping to reboot this blog and push forward.  There are only 209 days left in 2012.

Before delving into today’s listen, I should briefly touch on the artist, Amon Tobin.  Tobin was born in Brazil but left there with his family when he was 2 to live in numerous places around the world, including Morocco, the Netherlands, and England.  Most of his life he has lived in Brighton, England, until he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008.  Tobin began experimenting with samplers and other audio equipment while a teenager in Brighton, but he never really got involved in the music scene, let along release anything, until he responded to a magazine promotion by London record label Ninebar by sending a demo.  His career has taken off since then.

Electronic dance music (EDM), while it has been around a long, long time, really took off in the early 1990s, particularly in England.  Tobin consumed the sounds coming from DJs and began incorporating his own ideas.  He started sampling long before it became a popular style, yet he went largely unnoticed because he could not be associated with one style.  He released two critically acclaimed records, Bricolage (1997) and Permutation (1998), which set the stage for his first commercially-driven record, Supermodified.

# 200 – Amon Tobin, Supermodified (Metascore = 85)

Harking back to my reviews of Rounds and Pause by Four Tet, I am nowhere near an expert in EDM, let alone regular listener.  I know what moves me, and for the first half of this record, I really liked what Tobin put together.  ”Get Your Snack On” sounds like it would have fit in perfectly with any one of the Ocean’s movies.  The mixture of the organs, fast-paced drums, and flutes give this a Vegas vibe that is hard to shake off.  One of the appeals in this record is the wide assortment of sounds on each song, as if Tobin was trying to tell his biography through sounds he had heard in places he has lived or visited.  Equally impressive to me is the sequencing of those sounds, which always seem to be fluid (check out “Slowly”).  “Precursor” is an interesting track to me because Tobin, combined with beatboxer Quadraceptor, sounds like an android working in outer space.  “Chocolate Jockey”, which follows “Percursor”, sounds nothing like a robot working; “Chocolate Jockey” is more of a proper soundscape with its steady groove and interesting blends of sounds.

Not all of the album worked for me, though.  I first got lost with “Golfer vrs Boxer”; otherworldly in its sound, the track at times felt like it was bordering on losing control.  Perhaps that was the effect Tobin was going for, but for me the track just felt less fluid than the first four tracks.  It would be one thing if it effectively led into the next phase in the album, but “Deo” does not sound (to me) to be in the same solar system.  I also felt the record would drag at times, making me wish this thing would move forward.

Despite these minor issues, this record had a great vibe to it and introduced me to someone new I had not heard.  Tobin’s use of samples and instruments help create lush soundscapes that venture from Vegas cool to outer space weirdness.  The “85” score seems reasonable to me; the record does not feel groundbreaking, yet it does not feel like a rehash either.  I would be interested to hear more from him, particularly Bricolage.  I would recommend this record.