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Performance art with a beat

Mixmaster Amon Tobin brings his high-tech sound to Prague
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
April 23rd, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Wind him up and watch him go: Tobin loves to push the limits of technology.
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Amon Tobin


When: Friday, April 25, at 8
Where: Divadlo Archa
Tickets: The concert was sold out at press time (call 221 716 333 to check on possible cancellations)
Stimul Festival’s spring edition brings the Montreal-based DJ-producer Amon Tobin to town for the Prague premiere of his experimental sampling, a genuine sound art with driving beats in full cinematic surround sound.
When the London-based Ninja Tune label signed 24-year-old Amon Adonai Santos de Araujo Tobin to its roster in 1996, the Brazilian-born DJ-producer and drummer-percussionist seemed likely to follow the same track as Ninja Tune’s “Up, Bustle & Out” ensemble, with their street recordings of vendors and folk musicians in Latin American villages, combined with heavy doses of hip-hop and digital beats.
However, “Cujo” (Tobin’s original DJ moniker, named after a Stephen King novel) struck out on his own by combining Batucada (the explosive sound of Brazilian drummers) with Favela Funk, Samba, Bossa Nova and other Brazilian spices into a sampling mix of his main influences — drum ’n’ bass, jungle, hip-hop, break-beats, jazz and the blues.
There were slivers of much of this on his earliest recordings, but he changed tack soon enough. By the time Tobin (switching to the surname of his Irish stepfather) released Out from Out Where (2002), he was creating a spacey cinematic soundscape juxtaposed against flurries of drum ’n’ bass and jungle beats, with hardly a nod to electro-Latino.
That release included one of his biggest hits to date: “Verbal,” a hip-shaking ping-pong of beats and warped rapping in a futuristic, Spaghetti Western landscape. There are also orchestral strings and sultry Middle Eastern vibes in the mix. Overall, Out from Out Where offered a smorgasbord for hard-edged, global music/obscure vinyl sampling/electronica fans.
Since then, Tobin has forged his own path on the DJ-electronica scene, staying so ahead of the pack that he could be described as a sound-performance or multimedia artist — with a beat. He composed the soundtrack to the video game, “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory” in 2005, and the soundtrack for the Hungarian film Taxidermia (2006).
Tobin’s latest release, The Foley Room (2007), is his most complex sound excursion to date. He invited the avant-garde classical musicians of the Kronos Quartet to do studio recordings, which he used as segues in between field recordings of the clattering sounds of cooking utensils, revving motorcycles, caged tigers and swirling drum beats. With looped guitars and classical strings, analog instrumentation meets sampling head-on for the first time, and this collision is a musical rapture.
On his live recordings, like Solid Steel Presents Amon Tobin: Recorded Live (2004), Tobin strives to create or capture the rawest, most spontaneous moments of sound from bands like Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. He isn’t sampling these rock gods per se, but he reaches their legendary levels of intensity (and similarity in sonic effect) in his live performance.
Solid Steel Presents is mostly a rush of industrial and metallic crescendos mixed with a barrage of multilayered beats and spacey sound clips. It’s a sonic experience that goes far beyond Tobin’s studio recordings. Moreover, he uses a 7.1 surround-sound system for his live shows, which can only be used indoors. Archa offers the best space in Prague for his strict sound requirements.
Tobin only grants interviews for TV and video, which means that one of the best places to hear what he has to say is on YouTube. On a Nuziq 2007 interview on that site, he says modestly in native British English, “I think technology is never there to make your life easier. It’s there to help you do even more complicated things. And so, I think as an artist, it’s your duty to push the limits of technology.”
That Tobin does, better than most.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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