Album Review: Amon Tobin, ISAM

Album cover for 'Isam'. Photo / Supplied

The prolific and weird beat conductor Amon Tobin is back to wrestle and toy with your mind on album number seven. Since starting out in the mid-90s he's gone from using samples, to field recordings, and on ISAM he takes another bold new step. The Brazilian-born, British-based producer created this by using numerous field recordings he then "synthesised" to make the different sounds into their own unique instrument.

In so doing he created a vast pallette - or orchestra - of sounds with which to create the album. He calls it a "sound sculpture" and the result is masterful, as much for the way it is constructed as it is for the way it sounds.

Though it has subdued, almost dreamy moments, like on the cutesy Wooden Toy and Kitty Cat, ISAM is mostly in his trademark unsettling, yet fascinating, sonic guise.

It's not quite on the same demented level as other plunderers of beats, like Flying Lotus and Autechre. But Tobin walks proudly in the world of discord and mayhem with the scuttling seizure of Piece of Paper and the brain-rattling frequency masher of Mass & Spring.

He's never really done a bad album and ISAM is no exception. It has to be said though, for some it can sound clever and makes you wonder how he envisages these songs. But for others it could come across jumbled, thrown together and incongruous.

Then again, for those who love to dwell in headphone land, this album is one strange and joyous journey.

Stars: 4/5
Verdict: Boundary pushing dance music for the brain

- TimeOut