Track Listing

1. Bloodstone
2. Esther's
3. Keep Your Distance
4. The Killer's Vanilla
5. Kitchen Sink
6. Horsefish
7. Foley Room
8. Big Furry Head
9. Ever Falling
10. Always
11. Straight Psyche
12. At the End of the Day

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7825 in Music
• Released on: 2007-03-06
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Enhanced

Album Description
Electronic beatmaking legend Amon Tobin reinvents himself on Foley Room, an album meticulously created from field recordings and other found sounds. Still very much an Amon record, but with fresh new underlying sounds. Includes bonus DVD documenting the process.

Amazon.com
With Foley Room, Montreal's Amon Tobin throws his torch in with the blazing tradition of full-length works composed in the majority with found sounds. Having formerly made his name as a craftsman of vinyl samples into towering rhythmic dynamos like his fin-de-siècle LP, Supermodified, Tobin tries sampling the world for himself. With microphone in hand and his tape console slung over his shoulder, he captures the timbre of factories, a massive satellite dish, and local avant-garde improvisers with equal zest. One loping highlight comes early in "Big Furry Head," when during a token trip-hop lead-in--all reverb, squiggle, and over-compressed drumbeat--a tiger's hungry growls tears new life across the frequency spectrum, signaling the abyss-deep thump of Tobin's next new groove. Whether he's wandering through lush, meandering string workouts ("Bloodstone") or more aggressive avenues toward beauty ("Ever Falling"), Tobin's gait is ever informed by the beat. But where some contemporary found-sound sculptures like Matthew Herbert's Plat du Jour keep a more strident sampling ethos in the service of musical politics, Tobin's approach clearly reeks with a love of sound manipulation as its own reward: every process an adventure, each completed work a revelation. --Jason Kirk

Customer Reviews

Amon Tobin does it again
I guess it always was going to happen. Amon Tobin's past releases basically took record sampling as far as it could go. With Foley Room he and a team took to the streets with high-sensitivity microphones to capture source sound to use as the main components to process into the 12 tracks here. They include actual instruments like strings, drums, piano but also lion roars, motorcycle engines, agitated wasps and on and on.

His last album proper (I am maybe wrongly hesitant to call the soundtrack he did for Splinter Cell a true album) 'Out From Out Where' sounded just as the title suggested, from outer space and very sci-fci. 'Foley Room' sounds much more organic, surely in large part to his molding sounds from actual instruments and our environment. But believe me, you would have a hard time placing all the sounds on this album to their actual source as he (as in past releases) molds these samples into sound that rarely has any similarity to that of the original.

'Bloodstone' opens slowly building on a subtle piano trill and strings courtesy the Kronos Quartet. It segues into 'Esther's' with the same piano theme before a monster of bass beats and manipulated motorcycle engine revs bludgeon the listener. Esther's become's Bloodstone's mean older brother on steroids and speed and the album really takes off. 'Keep Your Distance' is as disturbing as any of Tobin's past spook-fests. Play this on the headphones and you will catch yourself checking over your shoulder. 'The Killer's Vanilla'-another great track with a superb outro. 'Foley Room' includes the requisite scatter-breaks that are Tobin's signature. 'Big Furry Head' is titled as a reference to a lion, whose roars are sampled and manipulated to such extent they would probably send the actual animal backpeddaling in fear. As with all of Tobin's records, the final tracks bring the listener down from the chaos that preceded.

Thoroughly recommended.

Unusual but less engaging work from Tobin
I had great expectations for this CD but found myself disappointed.

Tobin has in the past constructed his music from sampled segments from other people's records, but this time set out with mike in hand to widen his sound palette by using 'found' sounds. Insects, motorcycles, tigers, robots, pots and pans all make the mix. However, Tobin has also thrown in some musicians, including the Kronos Quartet.

For me, this is a case of "more is less". I am more a fan of the beat-driven, rhythmic and melodic parts of Tobin's work. This CD is Tobin at his most abstract to date. Yes, there are beats, but they often dissolve into a landscape of sound. Tobin often manipulates his source material with distortions and tweaking, but I never found myself really being engaged by the end result.

Tobin's sound has often been innovative, and this album delivers plenty of atmospheric soundscapes, but doesn't measure up to other true 'found sound' classics such as Eno & Byrne's seminal My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Sophisticated Artistry in Electronica Pur
Having been a fan of the Art of Noise in the 80's, it is a very high bar that reaches my ears these days, and Amon Tobin has done it. His incidental style, combined with crafty rhythms and a high degree of acoustic precision create something between acid jazz and techno, a very listenable, wordless play on the human spirit.