Track Listing

1. Back From Space
2. Verbal
3. Chronic Tronic
4. Searchers
5. Hey Blondie
6. Rosies
7. Cosmo Retro Intro Outro
8. Triple Science
9. El Wraith
10. Proper Hoodidge
11. Mighty Micro People

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54566 in Music
• Released on: 2002-10-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Album Description
4th release on Ninja Tune from Mr. Tobin, another masterpiece of Darkbreakbeats/Drum and bass and instrumental mayhem. 2002.

Amazon.com
Brazilian-born beatmeister Amon Tobin unleashes another genre-imploding and totally killer album (his fourth) with Out from Out Where. Darker, harder-edged, and less jazzy than its predecessor, Supermodified, the album's mood is actually closest to his debut. Out Where is dense and playful in its own ominous horror-soundtrack-with-beats manner, the post-jungle beats lovingly fractured and reconstituted in a way that simultaneously dizzies and makes one's head bob up and down in time. This album reminds the listener that it's possible to be experimental and accessible at the same time. Parts of Out Where sound like a late night pow-wow of lounge lovers Kruder & Dorfmeister, electronic genius Nobukazu Takemura, and DJ Food the cut-up kid. And while the lovely yet menacing Asian car chase music of "Searchers" might have you wondering whatever did happen to Photek, the album truly sounds like nobody else. Each track has actual surprises, and the disc just gets better with repeated plays. Huzzah! --Mike McGonigal

From URB Magazine
Let URB bear witness, to wit: Amon Tobin is, upon the release of Out From Out Where, Ninja Tune's most valuable asset. On this fourth album of breakbeat acrobatics, preternatural samplitude and incomparably complex sonic visions, Brazil-born Tobin has finally revealed the dark fruit of his batucada-driven soul to be best understood in commercial-ready sound bites. He's already proven himself a hot commodity, with bits of "Four Ton Mantis" (from 2000's Supermodified) cropping up in a Coca-Cola commercial. Of the entire Ninja Tune label, his tendency toward compact-yet-comprehensible break patterns is best suited for brief-yet-lucrative commercial background music that makes many small labels a butt-load of licensing cash.

Ergo, when you dice up the first 24 seconds of "Back From Space," you have the perfect mood music for selling a hot new malt beverage. It's mysterious and intoxicating like those echoed vibraphone notes, but the unkempt ambient sheets rustling in the back suggest there's sex somewhere in that six-pack. The pulsing industrial sound effects and martial jack beats of "Chronic Tronic" will appeal to game developers using the Doom engine, where the unrelenting thrust of otherworldly sounds mimics the mechanical march of heavily armed assassins, methodically wasting everything that moves. Of course, Out From Out Where is a wonderfully challenging album like its three predecessors — in fact, Out From Out Where reaches back to the unforgiving Latin darkness of his first Ninja Tune album, Bricolage — but the critical (and financial) value of this new offering lies in the parts, not the whole.

Heath K. Hignight

Customer Reviews

Guess who's back, back again...
There are only two things that would make me come back and review an album here at Amazon.com. One is being offered money. The other is the release of a new Amon Tobin album. The former will never happen but, thank God, the latter recently took place.

If there's one thing I can say about Mr. Tobin, it's that his albums with Ninja Tune truly show artistic development. He started off with a solid jazz footing in Bricolage, but with Permutation, Supermodified, and now this fourth album, he's moved further and further away from that foundation. Heck, on this album, he pretty much abandons it.

When an album starts off like this one does, you know you're in for something good. "Back From Space" sets the tone, letting the world know that the master is back. Then "Verbal" (featuring MC Decimal R.) comes on, and proves to be the most straight-up fun tune that Tobin has put his hands on. Admittedly, the concept of cut-up vocals was previously done by Prefuse 73, but at least Amon admits it.

If you're wondering what would happen if "Get Your Snack On" and "Four Ton Mantis" got together and had a child, "Chronic Tronic" answers your question in style, baby. It's totally funked-up and danceable to boot. It segues into "Searchers, which is haunting to say the least. The mere thought of Tobin touching strings brings joy to my ears, so imagine how I feel when I hear the result.

Tobin then pulls a surprise from his hat with "Hey Blondie." It's like no Tobin tune I've ever heard; it actually sounds a fair bit like R.E.M.'s "Drive." "Rosies" comes next, and it's an album highlight; it starts off all innocent, but then it shows its true colours and compels you to bob your head along with it.

The next tune, "Cosmo Retro Intro Outro," is straight out of left field. A casual listener might think that this is an underproduced tune by The Chemical Brothers or Fatboy Slim. As it stands, it's quite a nice surprise to hear Tobin doing an overtly dancefloor-friendly tune. But that's where the friendliness ends...

"Triple Science" could have come straight from a horror movie - the part where you're in a haunted house and you're opening a creaky door which is hiding some pretty nasty stuff behind it. The effects and the drums give a sese of urgency, like something is about to happen. That something is "El Wraith," the nastiest track on this whole album. It's dark from beginning to end; if you previewed the first two minutes of this at the Ninja Tune website, you have no idea what you're in for.

"Proper Hoodidge" starts to bring a close to the madness, but it's no less eerie. It vaguely reminds me of "Saboteur," but without the clinking bottles. Finally, "Mighty Micro People" serves its purpose well as "ending credits" music; it's calmer than the preceding nightmare, but definitely not wimpy.

There aren't too many artists who can put out one brilliant album in the space of their careers. Witness an artist who, with "Out From Out Where," has put out FOUR (I haven't heard "Adventures In Foam" so I can't comment on that). I always worry that Amon won't be able to step up his game when he puts his next album out. I mean, when you set the bar so high with each release, to set it even higher is pretty much the equivalent of Jesus walking on water again. However, it's safe to say that Amon's got wet feet, 'cause with "Out From Out Where," that bar has been raised yet again. Simply put, no one does it better.

Still in orbit
Amon Tobin has got to be one of Ninja Tune's most versatile artists (kinda tough to do on a label that boasts so much talent!); with his previous albums, he embraced the world of free jazz and breakbeat and neatly turned it on its head. Although I prefer his work as Cujo (Adventures in Foam has now been released by 3 different labels: Ninebar, Shadow, and now as a superior reissue by Ninja Tune!), I have to say that 'Out From Outwhere', while a stirring departure compared to his other works, is definitely another breakthrough album for Tobin. It still carries his trademark chaotic beats, but the atmosphere he creates is a bit more focused than on his earlier albums. Listen to it a few times, and you'll get what I'm saying. I won't try to tell you what the album 'sounds like'...that would be foolish. You just need to hear it for yourself. I'll just say that it's a wondrously symphonic piece of art.
I also disagree with the URB review; this is not an album for TV commercials, of all things. Albums like this are meant for your ears and feet, meant to be processed over and over again, and the images wrought from its synthesis in your brain are meant to be completely open to interpretation...I for one don't want to hear one of his songs and think of some automobile ad...do you?
Am I delving into his music too much? Perhaps. However, whether you agree or disagree with my opinions, it's hard to contest that Out From Out Where isn't worthy of the moniker "intelligent dance music". To my ears, Tobin has also reinvented that term as well.

+1/2 star - Experimentation over coherence
I hate to rain on the parade by docking a half star from the uniformly glowing reviews offered up so far (well, one star, since Amazon.com doesn't allow halfs), but this feels like a crossroads. This isn't a bad thing by any means: a cursory glance at my cd collection would betray an arguable OVERvaluation of experiment. It's just that the "Verbal" single (specifically, the three extra tracks) seemed to point toward a continuation of "Supermodified"'s remarkable smoothing out of Amon Tobin's music without sacrificing the complexity of the overall structural framework. A lot of this was accomplished with beats dropped at greater intervals and tied together by sustained melodies and textures. I was disappointed with that album at first, so perhaps this one will grow on me as well. The hyperactivity of "Permutation" (still my favorite) is back on this new disc, to a certain extent. However, the furious chattering breaks are arranged in digressive clusters that incorporate more electro and edgy digital noise elements than before; whereas "Permutation" often built the rhythms up to a nearly absurd density before releasing into a dreamlike lounge haze. My extracurricular activities are much less "hazy" these days, so it's possible that my laser-like focus on the parts (over the whole) has created discontinuity through dissection. Still, this disc feels less of a piece than Mr. Tobin's earlier works. Of course, this also means that the seeds of future directions here are manifold. Remember my extra 1/2 star: it's still a stellar achievement from an electronica frontrunner whose past excellence set the bar so high.