Amon Tobin

Six songs today!

Amon Tobin, “Precursor”

One of the big trends of rap beats was taking old soul music and speeding it up so that it sounds like the Chipmunks. Here, Amon Tobin sounds like he’s doing kind of the same thing, only with cartoon sound effects. Why not?

Arsonists, “Underground Vandal”

Beautiful drum loop on this song.

Negativland, “Fruitcakes, Suka-Brand Coffee, Power Failure, Citizens Band Parakeet etc.”

Negativland hosted a show called Over The Edge on Berkley’s KPFA, providing an outlet for surreal radio strangeness. I actually caught the show once while going to camp in Berkeley, and it was a mess but also entertaining. They also put out a set of (lightly) edited shows on CD, and I have a bunch of those. This is from Volume 6, the Wilsaphone Stupid Show, which was pieced together out of old found audio and family recordings from David “The Weatherman” Wills. What you hear on this, um, song is pretty representative of Over the Edge in general.

Good stuff today.

Foo Fighters, “New Way Home”

Every now and again, we get a huge band around here, and I’m never really sure what to say about them. I mean, sure some random-ass Canadian punk band, I can give a little capsule biography, talk about their discography. The Foo Fighters, though? Everybody knows them. Or, probably everybody reading this. So, I guess I’ll just say that I only have this album, The Color and the Shape, which I like just fine. But I never got around to picking up other albums.

Pretty cool stuff today.

Amon Tobin, “Proper Hoodidge”

It feels like we’ve had Tobin before, but the mighty and infallible Five Songs Index says no, so here we are. Tobin is probably my second favorite electronic artist after Squarepusher, with Supermodified being my favorite album of his. It’s sometimes difficult to say what he does differently from others. I suppose, fundamentally, that there’s more of a sense of narrative with his songs. He seems to be going somewhere with his stuff, and sometimes electronic music can seem a little unfocused or aimless.