Amon Tobin (Brazil)

Amon Tobin is a good example to illustrate the fact that the electronic music is a center of attraction for other art forms, and the technology opens up a range of new artistic possibilities.

Firstly, let me introduce Amon Tobin. I can objectively say that he is one of the most influential artists for every genre of music. Acclaimed by the audience and the press like nobody since 1997 (I already said that 97′ was a very successful year for electronic music in a previous post!), his work is inspired by jazz, blues, hip-hop and underground genres, the whole forming de-structured, complex, cerebral, hypnotic and organic sounds which often remind us of nature.

Listen to this following music, a great example of perfect composition:

Amon Tobin – Bloodstone
Album: Bloodstone (2007)

Amon is considered as a “virtuoso sound designer”, because he is always looking for new sound textures, like a scientist is researching on new technologies. While he plays the synthesizer, guitar, bass guitar, drums, saxophone, theremin, chapman stick, drum machine and sampler, he also develops his own sound algorithms on specialized softwares to produce very original noises, as shown in this video:

His albums often go with dedicated artworks (covers, artbooks) made by renowned artists, like in the album “ISAM” (2011) for which Tessa Farmer created impressive pictures of insects to highlight the organic sounds of the musician:

Finally, and maybe the most spectacular thing, his live shows. In 2011, Amon Tobin asked to multimedia artists and engineers to build an audio/visual performance for his live representations. The result is a cube-organized structure animated with light effects… You must see this short video to understand the outstanding rendering…

More information about “how do they do this?” here

I hope this post helped you to understand a little more what is electronic music and the possibilities it offers… To top it off, you can listen to the Amon Tobin’s last album with this player, I personnaly advise to listen to it before sleeping!

Amon Tobin
Album: ISAM (2011)