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Add praise and silent, awe-inpsired weeping for each and every track you see here, and you have a true, new fanboy of Amos Tobin's work.Aside from a dabbling in the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory video game, I had never heard Tobin before. Four Ton Mantis always puts a bob in my step. Now that I have, he's on the top of my list for artists to watch - he's a musical genius, and few words can describe my addiction for this electronic masterpiece. This album blows me away every time I hear it. The infectious hook of Get Your Snack On is embedded in my brain at this point.
If these super modifications sound showy at times, the pleasantly weird range of it all helps to make one forget. Tobin brought more artistic qualities to the electronic drum and bass genre then most of his peers from early on, and with his third proper, solidified creative integrity with an impressive array of work ranging from the hyper, robotic, and surreal, to an organic, relaxed, and cultural.
Recommend adding this to your collection if your a fan or new to his music. Amon Tobin really brings it. Good combination of chill downtempo beats and some thumping jungle mixed in.
One minute it's playing in the background, as some album always is, and the next I was just flooded and floored with a DAMN-that's-good-.@#$ sort of epiphany. My favorite tracks have to be Get Your Snack On, and Rhino Jockey. Final thought: You should look into the rest of Tobin's catalog, too. I was ambivalent towards this album when I first gave it the once over. Supermodified is markedly darker and 'bigger' than much of his other work, which has more pronounced jazz references. There is real brilliance here, and MORE than your typical attention to detail. Those albums are amazing, too.
Wow. And yeah, I like FS, too, but this is clearly on a whole new plateau. I referenced Fatboy Slim only due to the slightest 'big beat' comparisons. Everything on this album just works even where it sounded disjointed to the virgin ear. The kind of stuff you blare when you're hungover and getting ready for another shift in the Night Business.
To my ear it seemed sonically dispersed, sort of 'all over the place' and 'busy.' But I never, ever dismiss an album after one spin, unless it's glaringly obvious garbage- and on the second, third and so forth runs, the album as a WHOLE began to make sense. Both are prime examples of seriously unforgiving bad-assery. Just to watch those gears turn as Tobin's ideas were crunched through the machines. The exotic time signatures pounded by wall 'o sound percussion, the deliberate, ominously simple bass, the myriad of bizarre textures soaring over that juicy slaughter of rhythms. As a hobbyist musician, I'd kill to get a glimpse into the making of this disc.
Full of decadent ideas and whims all crammed up against each other like lemmings. but you get the feeling he shouldn't be confined; plonking away in dank, dungeon-esque studio's.
Film work surely beckons.'Supermodified' is the angular, spiky world of 'electronic brush-strokes' to cosh a cliché, but it's surprisingly diverse, deceptively melodic and, after a good few spins, genuinely haunting.Deconstructivist jollity aside, I was riveted by 'Supermodified' and I wouldn't mind more. He should be out in the sunshine, floating over field and dale, invoking mind-imagery in a classical music sense.
Laterally, 'Supermodified' is a mood piece, sound-scapes etc, but as a concept, I'm afraid it's off the rails. It has the same granite intensity, the same uncompromising fluidity.I know nothing about Amon Tobin, I'm non-plussed about his hap-hazard title, and I'm immediately suspicious of anything 'Featuring Quadraceptor' (what IS that.).
I just wish I could be sure it was safe. It doesn't draw the line, it's in over it's head - I get a disturbing feeling that it's something to be scared of.The road Amon Tobin is walking isn't gonna lead anywhere good.'Supermodified' is extremely corrupt.
It conjures up areas of mystery and sultry dynamics, readily striking maddening chords in reviewers like yours truly, who vociferously decry 'rock' in all it's insidious forms, but hypocritically embrace it's very fundamentals at every opportunity.'Supermodified' has as it's granddaddy, 23 Skidoo's epic 'Seven Songs' from way-back.
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