Welcome to this recurring article series where I namedrop some of my favorite artists making huge waves thru creative sound design. I also link a handful of favorite tracks that are really out there.
All hail Amon Tobin a.k.a. Cujo, Two Fingers, Stone Giants, One Child Tyrant, Figueroa – the last five mentioned aliases being current release artist names as well as when he uses his birth name. I mean, Tobin is a creative tornado, the Picasso meets da Vinci of modern electronic music – always tinkering, inventing, inverting, dissecting and reassembling things.
He’s a musical genius and is responsible for some of the heaviest feelings of joy, melancholy and suspense I’ve ever experienced in music, starting more than 25 years ago and tagging along through my young adult life through fatherhood and pushing past the 50 year mark.
Amon Adonai Santos de Araújo Tobin might as well have been Brazilian for Master Of Sound Design, because there’s nowhere this guy hasn’t gone without bringing back sonic proof. To the Earth’s core or Back From Space, from the dancefloor to the coldest of solitudes. You can always find something highly intelligent, playful and novel in his music, whatever the alias. Please do yourself a favor and check them all out.
Here’s a heavy set from a few years back, playing as Two Fingers:
It’s highly recommended to check out more of his legendary DJ sets, they’re insanely well ordered and put together.
Work, gear and production
Amon is quite the gear freak, nobody really knows the full extent of his studio setup, but among the Haken Continuum and a range of rare stuff like the Buchla, Tobin also has a modular chain big enough to control a large spaceship. And even if most of us could only dream of having this amount of hardware at our disposal, what he shows in the video below can actually apply a lot of what can be replicated in the box, i.e. in your DAW – we can at least try:
If you’ve ever wondered which DAW Amon uses to arrange his music, it’s Cubase. In the video below, originally published by Steinberg, the man of many artist aliases and styles can be see doing a virtual tour of how he uses the program:
Tobin’s artistic vision culminated a few years back with the release and live performance of ISAM, an incredible audiovisual live performance you should treat yourself to at least once, even if a full HD video of a fully immersive performance will never replace that experience:
That old interview from 2004
It’s really interesting to see how Amon Tobin’s work has evolved over the years, all while still coming from the same mind. In 2004 I was lucky enough to interview Amon Tobin about his then still upcoming Splinter Cell game soundtrack. This took place in Super PLAY 003, a defunct Swedish video game magazine with local Nordic editions, from which these following excerpts originate:
Your music has been called both deep, dark and mystical. A kind of widescreen concert for the ears. How do you work on implementing this massive presence of sound in the game?
Amon Tobin: I try to make music that supports the mood instead of engulfing it entirely. But the code words for this project are ‘lush’ and ‘expansive’. The soundtrack may very well end up having a quite wide spectrum of sounds, from the very abstract to bass riffs, drum rolls to string sections. Every level in the game consists of four levels of intensity in the soundtrack, which are designed to blend together and apart, depending on the player’s actions. I try to be as understanding towards the action and the visual side of the game as possible, but in the end Ubisoft contacted me because they wanted “my sound” in the game. Hopefully the result will be a good mix of both.
The idea of layers of music being blended together as the action (in the game) intensifies in many was resembles the idea of a DJ playing two records at once. What do you take with you from the clubs into the creation of this soundtrack?
Amon Tobin: Surprisingly, I think this has helped me a lot in grasping transitions between themes and moods. I constantly use the tricks I have learned playing, to match things that have no immediately apparent way of working together.
Speaking of fantasy games versus realistic games: Where’s your head when you make music?
Amon Tobin: When I work on my music I’m usually low on sleep and riding high on a joint. At that point in time, I probably would have a hard time telling you which of the two I was in.
Mr. Tobin also disclosed that his favorite game at the time was Tekken 3, for the action and for the combo attacks.
Here are some of my personal favorite tracks by Tobin – maybe you’ll like them too:
More info: amontobin.com and nomark.net
Image credit: Amon Tobin
