Amon Tobin - Musical Style and Influences

Musical Style and Influences

Tobin is best known for his use of audio manipulation techniques, where any given source material is transformed to produce a new sound. His use of this technique has changed over the course of his career. On his original singles under Ninebar and his first three albums, Tobin acquired all of the sound sources to produce music from his personal collection of vinyl records. He manipulates the sounds with a combination of audio hardware and software such as Cubase, often leaving the original source unrecognizable in its new context. The majority of his early work focused on reordering the break beats from jazz and blues music into faster more complex patterns. Guido Farnell of InTheMix.com, wrote about his use of this technique, saying that Tobin has "taken the art to new and dizzying heights." His fifth album Out From Out Where, began the gradual shift away from prerecorded material by incorporating original guitar samples. His techniques began branching into technical sound design, taking break beats or single instruments, modifying specific frequencies, and producing new sounds. This trend continued through his video game score Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Soundtrack, and by his sixth album, Foley Room, all of the source material was recorded in the field by himself. Speaking about the creativity of sample-based music compared to traditional instruments, he says that "creative input is not determined by your source material but in how you edit and manipulate the sounds."

Tobin experimented with various instruments. He does not come from a music family, nor has he had any formal training in music theory. About his music in general, Tobin says that he sees it as a "genuine" expression of the time he lives in, as he says that by contrast, blues, jazz, and Brazilian genres were "genuine" expressions of the 1960s. Despite his indirect connection with Brazilian genres, Tobin collaborated with a number of artists on Bebel Gilberto's 2000 bossa nova album Tanto Tempo. Tobin's albums are often compared to soundtracks, and he says that movies by David Lynch have influenced him. In addition, he has stated to like films by the Coen brothers, Dario Argento, and Roman Polanski.