Amon Tobin - ISAM

  On 5/12/2011 at 6:39 PM, Enter a new display name said:

Fight between the Clark fanboy crew and the angry french canadians!

lol

lololol

  On 5/12/2011 at 3:01 PM, Adam Beker said:

guess you have no idea how much time and skill it takes to create those sounds and make them work well with the music.

well, i do. and forgive me as regarding it as a gimmick/album byline to dodge the fact that the album is pretty dull and emotionless. it reminds me of those "microsound" tracks, where the track is only a second long, but hundreds of events go down in that one second. someone will spend weeks editing together one second of audio. the result is one second of clicky noises. you say, "oh, er, that's nice." but it isn't. you're just being polite. "academic" music is the equivalent of studying how paint dries when you layer a dozen different kinds. i'm looking for an emotional work of art, not something that pushes the frontiers of house paint.

i hope to christ no one ever starts calling my work "academic." then i'll know it's time to take up painting or something....

If it provokes a positive emotional response from me when I listen to it does it make it emotionless ?

i wiki'd microsound and found this:

  Quote

Originally coined by minimal artist Steve Roden, lowercase is an extreme form of ambient minimalism in which very quiet sounds bookend long stretches of silence. Roden started the movement with an album entitled Forms of Paper, in which he made recordings of himself handling paper in various ways. These recordings were actually commissioned by the Hollywood branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowercase_%28music%29

maybe i was more otm than i realized....

  On 5/12/2011 at 9:13 PM, mcbpete said:

If it provokes a positive emotional response from me when I listen to it does it make it emotionless ?

is that emotion "turn it off, it's just ten minutes of boingy noises with snatches of melody" ??

Snatches of melody? Really? Are we listening to the same record? Man, Amon Tobin must be more over peoples heads than I realized

  On 5/12/2011 at 9:16 PM, hahathhat said:

is that emotion "turn it off, it's just ten minutes of boingy noises with snatches of melody" ??

Nope - Journey man gets my psyched up, Kitty Cat makes me chuckle (and feel a little bit sexy), Dropped from the sky gives me about a thousand goose pimples and One Last Look makes me well up with the epicness of it all.

dropped from the sky would be okay if it were three minutes instead of seven.

kitty cat:

journeyman: written as i listen! waiting for the beat to drop. ok, there it is. now some ripping bass? no, more bell noises, plongs, and "psychedelic" chorus'd choruses. oh, interesting, it's going kind of like orch hits in space. not bad, but i find the rhythm a bit... plodding? it's hard to explain. too much air in the funk. the whole song starts to feel a bit slow. i miss his tight, meaty drum tears. okay the song is stretching off into infinity. streetch burble bubble. i am getting bored. no melody, just the song disappearing up its own arse. chorus'd choruses are showing up again, not quite a melody. the loop from the beginning of the track. bass drops but doesn't really grab me. disappears up its own arse as outro. honestly, if i had to fail this for a reason, it's energy. it's very slow and lazy feeling. he knows his tension and twangs, but those moody bits used to be a brief stopover instead of the whole shebang. it's like he's made the intro to "slowly" his whole career.

one last look: is not on my ninjatune-angering pirated watermark preview copy

alright, you guys know what? go buy "radical connector" or "idiology" by mouse on mars, and stack it up against ISAM.

I have Idiology. Great album. But I like ISAM a LOT more. As I said it's one of my three favorite all time albums. Idiology compared to it sounds like lifeless techno that doesn't go anywhere.

I don't really understand what's your problem here hathathat. Are you trying to prove that this album is bad or something? You don't like this album, It's dull and boring for you. That's OK. It's just a matter of taste.

point is to increase my postcount.

This album really isn't that difficult and it doesn't seem at all academic to my ears. :-/

It sounds pretty luscious and emotional and lively to me. Sure, it's not 'banging', but it it's pretty visceral and exciting when played loud.

I really want to see it performed live at The Roundhouse next month, for some reason I keep putting off buying tickets ...

I'm seriously considering sitting out on Amon Tobin's ISAM performance to troll all of you.

That would be more of a troll to yourself.

  On 5/13/2011 at 4:52 AM, usagi said:

I don't understand the Foley Room hate, I love that record

Me 2.

  On 5/13/2011 at 11:05 AM, Eggs said:

  On 5/12/2011 at 3:10 AM, Philip Glass said:

I've found it :

 

ISAM is like all the fucking Transformers movie sounds turned into beats.

 

the first 50 seconds of this youtube.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjQZEnBzW0E&feature=related

Nice

Thanks for proving my point. As much as I like Amon, this is just a lot of work for what ends up being Transformers sounds. I'll continue listening to Permutations

  On 5/13/2011 at 11:05 AM, Eggs said:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjQZEnBzW0E&feature=related

Fucking awesome.

  On 5/13/2011 at 4:52 AM, usagi said:

I don't understand the Foley Room hate, I fuckin love that record

isam is clenched together with just bits popping out here or there. it teases you with little listens and then explodes to a thousand pounds of minimalist pressure pumping through the ear holes

Fig 12.4(a) Trying to map the structure of ISAM using a deep space probe

[vimeo]23914078[/vimeo]

  On 5/18/2011 at 8:53 PM, Enter a new display name said:

[vimeo]23914078[/vimeo]

COOOL!

I really appreciate great sound design anymore and have faith I will not pull an annoying internet critic listening to this record for the first time. Even with all the people taking this record down I know will not let that stop me from enjoying the shit out of this. Hopefully I can listen to this later today in the right mindset with some good cans.