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Old Amon Tobin was just the best. At the end of the day, Slowly, Journeyman...some of the best music I have ever heard.
His stuff with the London Symphony Orchestra is bonkers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggl_pWkbEoc).
All of his recent stuff isn't quite my cup of tea, but that's just the nostalgia factor speaking. I guess anyone who discovers a musician during one of their eras may not necessarily like their other eras...which is more of a condemnation of the listener, rather than the musician, perhaps :)
Foley Room is my #1. I don't mind some of his more recent stuff, even the bass-ey Two Fingers stuff, but I do prefer the early stuff too. Though it's not as much up my alley I'm kind of intrigued by the album he put out under the Figueroa name, which is kind of psychedelic-folk or something. Take a quick listen before reading the next part (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWiXC_O_EVo). Here's the crazy part: Other than his voice, _every_ sound you hear in that song is synthesized and programmed with midi, including the "acoustic" guitar. He said in an interview if you were starting from scratch it would have been easier to learn to play the guitar, but I guess if you've spent your life devoted to mastering electronic production...
I saw him tour in the ISAM era and it was a pretty wild cubic setup and light show he had going on. Quite entertaining
Oh man, that's exactly the song I was thinking of (though I had the original, electronically-produced version in mind). The glissando string part, which comes in at 2:28 in your recording, is this cinematic, unapologetic, swaggering thing, like a sweeping helicopter shot of an Aston Martin zooming across Tunisia.
I do prefer the original, electronically-produced version, because I think Amon Tobin is more talented as a producer than as a composer per-se, and I think a lot of the non-"classical" sounds in At the End of the Day are really well selected, like the electric guitar. It adds to the "James Bond"-ness of it all. This is the original, AIUI:
The most striking thing about At the End of the Day is just... how much it actually feels like the end of the day. At least to me. I've been playing it for years now, off and on, when I need to wind down and my day needs to end, and it still does the trick, every time. (Though sometimes I might want^H need to listen to it two or three times....)
That song is a gem - deep in rotation back in the day. Never knew London Met did it. Grazie.
I don't know about you all but I miss the websites of 2007. There was so much variation and unbridled creativity. I remembered stumbling upon this page in 2007 while looking up Amon Tobin's soundtrack to Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I can't remember the last time I saw a musician launch such a beautiful interactive site for their album release. And here it is in 2024, lovingly preserved and still functional on Internet Archive.
I was amazed that the site still runs, apparently still using the same engine.
But it seems that it was a flash site (of course), and archive.org seems to replace Flash Player with "Ruffle" [1]. Either that, or someone of Tobin's team replaced Flash with Ruffle >= 2019.
Spliter Cell: Chaos Theory introduced me to Amon Tobin. Top Gear also heavily played Amon Tobin when showcasing cars, until the BBC had enough of Jeremy Clarkson. Whoever picked the music for the show was a big fan.
Canibus had a cool web player! You could make your own version of his music (Mentioned in https://theoutline.com/post/6977/canibus-internet-mic-club)
Doja Cat has a programmable music video: https://dojacode.com/
It's sad, but unfortunately it's kind of like the whole "vulkan" issue: allow a great tool to degenerate that people can actually easily use (Flash) and then replace it by much more difficult to use and/or less well supported technologies (HTML5)
The issue is, the training and support for similar projects in JS and CSS took such a long time (and honestly is still nowhere near the ease of use of Flash) that by just a few years later interactive websites became a throwback anyway. Now, if anyone were to do that, it would carry a dreadful air of nostalgia.
That said, perhaps they would have carried on if not for Adobe basically refusing to fix Flash, but I think by the time Steve Jobs' note was published it was already out of vogue. The end of skeuomorphism and the era of "flat design everything" was concurrent, and these were easily accommodated by contemporary web technologies without Flash. I think that's also an important point, there was an era where such websites as Amon Tobin's were considered basically old-fashioned and lethargic, and everyone was genuinely very excited about turning everything into flat design.
You are the only one with this opinion. Nobody else on HN has ever expressed nostalgia for the old internet before.
Amon Tobin on HN? Wow
His music is great (Long Stories, Out From Out Where, Supermodified)
The website experience is neat.
This is the second musician I see making an ambitious computer project.
The other being that game Neil Cicierega made.
I jokingly pick Slowly by Amon Tobin to be the soundtrack for when they do the lethal injection thing to me.
He also did the soundtrack for one of the Tom Clancy games (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory). While I’ve never played the game, I really enjoyed the music.
I was a big fan fifteen years ago. I'd love to hear from other fans of Amon Tobin back in the day, what are you listening to these days? What contemporary music should I check out if I was an amon tobin fan 15 years ago?
Amon Tobin might be on here even, who knows.
I don’t want to say I’m disappointed with his output, because I’m not. His creative and artistic self is far beyond what most people are willing to invest and endure of their life force into, and I appreciate knowing a person like him is out there.
I suppose I’m mostly heartbroken that we’ve had a golden decade of some incredible music from this person and he has essentially disappeared into an abyss of soundscaping. I think Foley Room was the transition period and then ISAM really went all out.
Parallels can be made with bands like Autechre, but that’s a different discussion.
I just want Amon Tobin back.
I went to his Two Fingers show a couple years back, it was mind blowing.
Yup, I couldn't agree more. His music from back in the day is so incredibly unique and nobody has made anything like it before or since. It's impossible to find anything like it. Unfortunately he seems to no longer want to make music like that.
If I was a billionaire I'd write him a blank cheque to make more music like his old stuff.
But, I'm no musician, maybe he literally can't anymore. I don't know how it works, or how insulting the mere notion would be to him.
All hail Ninja Tune!
If you don't know, go listen to Mr. Scruff, The Herbaliser, Fink, Coldcut, Kid Koala, Bonobo, Blockhead, Talvin Singh, and almost countless more.
Truly a case in point for the value of record labels, imo.
Talvin Singh's album "OK" is jaw-dropping sober. With ketamine, it's apotheotic.
Also: footless, and fancy-free, think how happy mom'll be...
Weird, I saw this article about Pitchfork being merged into GQ [0], which points to this stats page on Pitchfork [1] only to see Amon Tobin is one of the select few to receive a perfect 10 for Bricolage in 1997 to then having him reaching the front page of HN. All that in the span of 30 minutes.
[0] https://www.platformer.news/why-pitchfork-died/?ref=platform... [1] https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/25-years-of-...
There was a TV commercial for the Wii that had Amon Tobin's "Verbal" as the song while the player flipped their couch and jumped around their living room while playing Metroid. The song fit so well and was so cool and different, it kind of stuck with me. I don't remember how, but some time later I heard it again with the keywords "ninja tune" attached to it, and I thought that was the name. Took quite a number of years until I found out what the song and artist's names actually were.
Way way later, I found the commercial's footage on archive.org, but it didn't feature the song, which was a shame.
I'll never forget working at skateboard.com back in 2000 and watching éS: Menikmati and Slowly was the opening track. I didn't even care about the video, I just wanted to know what the music was...
"Chocolate Lovely" (from Supermodified) is one of my favorite tracks in this or any genre: https://open.spotify.com/track/1vBoAGHCyteNYVnODrBuLK?si=ksz...
Amon Tobin does great stuff.
His more recent stuff is interesting as well.
I love Long Stories, made on a broken Omnichord (see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38563627 )
Ninja Tune record label used to have pretty good stuff
Still does. Kamasi washington, thundercat, louis cole, kadhja bonet, laurel, haitus kaiyote are all at the top of their game and signed to ninja tune.
It's a really different sound from "back in the day" and likely to be rejected by a lot of the people who grew up on like, bonobo and dj vadim. But the label plays the same role, favoring experimental & alternative groove-based musicians.
The "original" ninja tune artists were so influential that key elements of their sound just became part of the main stream of pop and hip hop today. The current crew is similarly disproportionately influential on other musicians, and I'm nearly certain it will play out the same way.
ninja tune, warp records and somafm struggling on dialup, take me back
Amon Tobin was also an early adopter of Final Scratch on Linux. His "Recorded Live" album on Ninja Tune's Solid Steel series included liner notes about the challenges of touring with a Linux laptop instead of records in 2003.
Amon Tobin has lots of great music. Another one to check out by him is the Adventures in Foam album that he did under the Cujo moniker. Very heavy on jazz samples.
Easy Muffin has to be my favorite song of his as well as Get Your Snack On.
Neat! I don't see Tobins everyday, especially not on HN.
I tried 3 browsers and didnt get audio in any of them. Only occasional fractions of a second of audio. I tried the high quality and low quality options.
Neat. Had some of his stuff on vinyl. At some point he was almost mainstream, even composed the OST for a Splinter Cell video game.
Should there be any music? I only can hear a starting sound. It's hard to get anything of it?
I had to drop to the low-res version. Guessing whatever they used for detecting high-bandwidth connections is failing to grasp the values a decade-and-a-half later.
You have to navigate around to find different critters that play music clips. The minimap in the top left tell you where they are in your vicinity.
He's been posting some really interesting 3d art and composition on Instagram, where he also announced he was retiring from DJing. Glad to see him explore his art the way he sees fit instead of turning into a music factory.
I came across this guy doing a Bridge drum cover the other day - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gChXOOqA8gg
fyi Two Fingers == Amon Tobin
https://ninjatune.net/artist/two-fingers
OOO we are doing Tobin on HN:
Beautiful projection map! I wonder if they're using TouchDesigner for this.
Fascinating that the actor from the Saw movies is so talented outside of designing elaborate death machines
I wonder if there are any MonkeyRadio fans lurking around HN?
Bricolage is my personal favorite. Been a fan forever
No sound though :(
Or is it just me?
I've got no sound either. :(
Works in Firefox though.
No sound for me either; Firefox 120.
I honestly had to do a double take when I saw this make the front page. Never thought I'd see Amon Tobin top HN!