5 out of 5

Label: Ninja Tune

Producer: Amon Tobin

I own a lot of music.  I know, you do too.  Part of the reason I started reviews is because one of the labels I collect VHF – has a lot of similar soundings albums / acts, and I wanted to sort of force myself to really listen to each CD to hear the differences.  From there, the concept expanded to just reviewing any and everything, including stuff I just stumble across or plan to sell or whatever.  VHF is mostly an improv / psychedelic label, but I also collect Hydra Head and some various indie craps, which exposes me to a lot of different styles of music… some stuff I never thought I’d be listening to but end up enjoying.

I have never heard anything like Amon Tobin’s ‘Isam’.  This is the kind of electronic music I dream about, the kind of stuff that Aphex Twin sometimes hinted at, but Richard James’ more experimental albums are forever playful and distracted at points, and so even in his genius he’s never delivered something so committed.

The allmusic review for this album makes the point that Tobin’s style somewhat shifted after his involvement with video game soundtracks.  It’s a valid observation.  Tobin’s earlier works are definitely funkier, focusing more on jungle / world music workouts that nonetheless displayed his immense skill in sound manipulation and shifting and pulling beats through wicked metamorphoses.  ‘Isam’, on the other hand, absolutely echoes the more ambient aspects of ‘Splinter Cell,’ or the junkyard scrap sound of ‘Infamous’, but it’s taken out even further.  Stripped of the need to underline a game-playing experience, Amon just goes off the rails in the best possible sense.  There’s still a thick backbone to each and every track, and toward the end of the album we get back into more typical beat-based tracks (proving Tobin’s slick sense of sequencing as well, since the ‘reward’ for getting to this songs is intense), but somehow the music is built from nowhere, from nothing, to build into inventive slices of ambiance, ethereal sounds, cut-up bips and beeps .  And perhaps I’m just being influenced by the cover art, but there’s an overall warmth to the disc, flooded with a sense of the natural, of nature and living and breathing.

Unlike anything else, and my words cannot do it justice.