ISAM by Amon Tobin
What a treat on this, the most auspicious of holidays: Amon Tobin posted his upcoming album, ISAM, for preview in full on SoundCloud earlier this morning, following an announcement on the Ninja Tune site that the album is now available digitally after leaking online earlier this week. You'll find few perceivable resemblances to his previous LPs here; there are, however, similar themes in this one: a balance between fulness and negative space, darkness and light, tenderness and coarseness; the effective theme is a mechanical portrayal of nature. He plays with a wider range of acoustic textures and conceives a veritable work of art. Overall, it's a another one of Tobin's trips across a wide soundscape of emotions, calcimined by a nostalgia for something that never happened.
"Journey Man" and "Piece of Paper", as well as "Lost & Found" (featured on Ninja Tunes XX Anniversary box set), all recall the Eskamon project, with a crunch for every well-placed abstracted percussion sample. "Lost & Found" seems to be the progenitor for the rest of the album's tracks, and provides a context for the album at-large.
"Surge" feels like a Foley Room castaway, only without the familiar structure that made many of those tracks memorable in their own right; it's one of the more amorphous pieces with a will to lull.
"Goto 10" is reminiscent of tracks made for his Two Fingers collaboration (cf. "Trickstep Rhythm"), while "Bedtime Stories" opens up soft and sweet, like Foley Room's title track, but instead of coasting on a recognizable plane, it unfurls into something heavier.
"Wooden Toy" sees Tobin experimenting with vocals again, in a similar way to "Horsefish" of the previous LP, except here it's set to the backdrop of a lonely night near a dimly-lit carousel.
"Kitty Cat" can be imagined as a collaboration with the Gorillaz; it is a rare number that features singing in verses (a notable departure), not just vocal play.
"Calculate" is a curious number in how novel it is in Tobin's cannon, and it's also the shortest on the album. It has as a shimmering-fog-style approach found in Télépopmusik's Genetic World; this is a singular and almost parenthetical track, and the feel of it is distinct in its slow, innocent build-up to a quiet recursion.
Here's a video with Tobin on a Continuum Fingerboard, showcasing his designer spectral morphing, as well as a few others, as heard on ISAM:
ISAM is available digitally now at the Ninjashop and iTunes with bonus track "One Last Look", and is set to be released in physical format May 23rd.
Go to the ISAM site here for more info about the album and the upcoming art instillation, opening May 26th to June 3rd at the Crypt Gallery in London.
John Cage would have undoubtedly approved.
