Foley Room (Bonus Dvd)

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.

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