It’s been four years, since Amon Tobin raised the bar for electronic music with his album Foley Room by a good five meters. Producers like Bibio, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke and Mount Kimbie have been of major interest ever since. Dubstep exploded and has found its pop-Starlet in Skream and its perfect match in Scuba. Hence, in electronic music, four years can also mean that absolutely no one remembers you, at all. But what does Amon Tobin care? On ISAM, he just moves even further away from his past and cheekily even circumnavigates the present. ISAM is less Jazz-Breaks and Drum & Bass memories, less driving beat-bombs and cinematic story-telling ISAMis much more the sound of the big bang. Embedded in destructive waves of gravity, sound-particles are being compressed, stretched and twisted until they take their very own shapes and strive for order within dusty clouds of chaos. Through the experiment of trying to create threads of melodies out of single sounds, Amon Tobis leaves the focus on rhythm behind. He piles up collages into a paradox of alleged structural disorder and almost frightening tonal clarity and thereby moves closer towards Autechre than any other of his Ninja Tune colleagues. ISAM is sound in all its heaviness and complexity.
Isam
