Track Listing

1. Get Your Snack On
2. Four Ton Mantis
3. Slowly
4. Marine Machines
5. Golfer vrs Boxer
6. Deo
7. Precursor
8. Saboteur
9. Chocolate Lovely
10. Rhino Jockey
11. Keepin' It Steel
12. Natureland

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19824 in Music
• Released on: 2000-05-16
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com's Best of 2000
Amon Tobin's off-kilter rhythms and jazzy samples create a beautiful mess on Supermodified. Feeding off Latin rhythms, downtempo beats, and wildly adventurous musical jumbles, Tobin's manic bliss never allows the songs to wander, working a sense of method into a sea of crazy atmospheres. The result is focused, enticing, and fascinating. --Matthew Cooke

Amazon.com
At the junction of jazz and breakbeat science, Amon Tobin is one of the undisputed masters. Instead of drawing on jazz samples and styles as a sort of prepackaged cultural signifier, he's engaged in the cross-fertilization and recontextualizing that many aspire to but not so many achieve. On this release, he casts his net farther afield--the smoky nightclub trumpets and sultry beats of 1998's Permutation are still present, but the hummingly intense electronics and roiling drums on tracks like "Rhino Jockey" leave the jazz references pretty far behind. The track "Precursor" uses what is called "vocal percussion" to emulate the click-and-pop assemblages of some of the farther out German electronic experimentalists and segues neatly into the down-tempo groove of "Saboteur," which is built on a bottle-clinking percussive sample from obscure '60s blues-rock outfit the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation. "Keepin' It Steel" is reminiscent of Stereolab in a way, with a pleasantly lazy tempo that manages the neat trick of sounding like it's in an odd-metre time signature when it's not, punctuated by horns that evoke a '70s reggae record. --Bob Bannister

Customer Reviews

The Thinking Man's Fatboy Slim
I was ambivalent towards this album when I first gave it the once over. To my ear it seemed sonically dispersed, sort of 'all over the place' and 'busy.' But I never, ever dismiss an album after one spin, unless it's glaringly obvious garbage- and on the second, third and so forth runs, the album as a WHOLE began to make sense. One minute it's playing in the background, as some album always is, and the next I was just flooded and floored with a DAMN-that's-good-!@#$ sort of epiphany. The exotic time signatures pounded by wall 'o sound percussion, the deliberate, ominously simple bass, the myriad of bizarre textures soaring over that juicy slaughter of rhythms... Wow. Everything on this album just works even where it sounded disjointed to the virgin ear.
As a hobbyist musician, I'd kill to get a glimpse into the making of this disc. Just to watch those gears turn as Tobin's ideas were crunched through the machines. There is real brilliance here, and MORE than your typical attention to detail.
My favorite tracks have to be Get Your Snack On, and Rhino Jockey. Both are prime examples of seriously unforgiving bad-assery. The kind of stuff you blare when you're hungover and getting ready for another shift in the Night Business.
I referenced Fatboy Slim only due to the slightest 'big beat' comparisons. And yeah, I like FS, too, but this is clearly on a whole new plateau.
Final thought: You should look into the rest of Tobin's catalog, too. Supermodified is markedly darker and 'bigger' than much of his other work, which has more pronounced jazz references. Those albums are amazing, too.

Featuring 'Quadraceptor' (!)
Laterally, 'Supermodified' is a mood piece, sound-scapes etc, but as a concept, I'm afraid it's off the rails. It doesn't draw the line, it's in over it's head - I get a disturbing feeling that it's something to be scared of.
The road Amon Tobin is walking, isn't gonna lead anywhere good.
'Supermodified' is extremely corrupt. Full of decadent ideas and whims all crammed up against each other like lemmings. It conjures up areas of mystery and sultry dynamics, readily striking maddening chords in reviewers, like yours truly, who vociferously decry 'rock' in all it's insidious forms, but hypocritically embrace it's very fundamentals at every opportunity.
'Supermodified' has as it's granddaddy, 23 Skidoo's epic 'Seven Songs' from way-back. It has the same granite intensity, the same uncompromising fluidity.
I know nothing about Amon Tobin, I'm non-plussed about his hap-hazard title, and I'm immediately suspicious of anything 'Featuring Quadraceptor' (what IS that!?) but you get the feeling he shouldn't be confined, plonking away in dank, dungeon-esque studio's. He should be out in the sunshine, floating over field and dale, invoking mind-imagery in a classical music sense. Film work surely beckons.
'Supermodified' is the angular, spiky world of 'electronic brush-strokes' to cosh a cliché, but it's surprisingly diverse, deceptively melodic and, after a good few spins, genuinely haunting.
Deconstructivist jollity aside, I was riveted by 'Supermodified' and I wouldn't mind more. I just wish I could be sure it was safe.

Tobin: Supermodified!
Hat Trick! Amon Tobin released 3 equally brilliant but very different albums (Bricolage, Permutation, Supermodified), each a masterpiece in their own ways. This may be the best place to start for Tobin, but it kind of depends what could hook you first (then, obviously, you acquire a taste for Tobin's music and can build up with the others, or something like that). If jazz is your thing, Permutation. Like darkness? This. If you like the sounds of drum and bass, Bricolage is your best bet. If you like the soundtrack to Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the soundtrack to that. (I really don't recommend Adventures in Foam or The Foley Room first). Of course, that's only a suggestion.

Amon Tobin modified his sound beyond belief with this album. The Drum and Bass has been deftly toned down. It's packed with even more change. There are less obviously notable loops. And he further takes the ____load of textures the guy uses and melds them. I like the way he plays with the sultry textures of Chocolate Lovely, pairing it up after different sounds, creating patterns. It's fun to listen to, and it helps get old. While Tobin's loops will irritate most people who don't want to see why it's loops are there (especially with Keepin It' Steel, which is fascinating), figure it out. Don't limit your imagination with this.

Once all digested, you get a brilliant album. You can let your mind wander (or have method to your madness) with no relief and even break into a groove. And Supermodified will take you across many areas. The Sultry Chocolate Lovely with it's chill-out vibe that's organic and puts Thievery Corporation to shame. Songs that can creep you out a bit like Golfer Vs. Boxer and Saboteur (the latter sounds like an ancient tomb). Groove to the MONSTER breakbeats of Four Ton Mantis. Listen to factory music in Rhino Jockey. Take a mile drive on the freeway to Get Your Snack On. And don't forget to relax in Natureland and Deo. The moods this guy creates, electronic music has soul, case closed. These are reasons why Tobin is my favorite electronic artist, ever. Mary Anne Hobbs is right. There is no artist out there who has achieved sonically what he is doing. Not just sonically though. I say cut sonically out. There is no artist out there who has achieved what he is doing.

I realize I may be a bit biased, and this review sounds like hyperbole, but Amon Tobin really owns my head. This guy, in my opinion, makes than 99 percent of electronic artists look lazy.

10/10