This is theoretically a fantastic time for Amon Tobin to return to form. The Montreal producer cut his teeth on drum and bass in the late 1990s, proving time and again he was one of the genre's most creative practitioners. Meanwhile, for the past two or three years, labels like Med School, Critical, and NonPlus+ have helped free drum and bass from a creative stasis. Tobin, though, has never really been one for movements, or revivals of movements. His career interests span tasteful breakbeat jazz, aggressive storms of percussion, and moody video game soundtracks. Until 2007's Foley Room, every direction had been underpinned by the orchestral and jazz samples Tobin favored working with.
ISAM, the densest, most fractal album of Tobin's career, again abandons sampling in favor of digitally altered samples of Tobin's own. It is a collaboration with London-based visual artist Tessa Farmer, whose work is heavy on scary looking bug-warrior skeletons. Tobin sings for the first time, though his vocals are "gender modified," sometimes sounding like a woman, but more often like a cipher for his machines. This level of obfuscation contrasts the familiar, jazzy samples that marked his work for so long. Even when Tobin's tracks were hustling along at 180 bpm, his considered sampling afforded them a structural grace.
In abandoning his long-held methods for concepts-- both musical and extra-musical-- Tobin's work has come untethered. ISAM cuts closer to Autechre's entropic electro than anything in Tobin's catalog. At times, during the opening moments of "Mass & Spring" and "Night Swim" for instance, Tobin approaches psych-y drone music. "Goto 10" is a mechanistic lullaby, while "Journeyman" indulges in a slow-leak bass fantasy. These are deconstructions all. Nowhere on ISAM does the beat congeal around a head-nodding tempo, nor can Tobin's melodies stroll for long before finding a cliff's edge. It's hard to imagine ISAM accompanying another artist's work: It is by no means gallery-pleasing mood music, and its constant stops and starts are immensely distracting.
Tobin used to be a dependable, dedicated craftsman, but he's intent on transitioning to full-on sonic artist. He has the ideas: ISAM's pieces keep wandering into unmarked industrial zones, evoking broken things and blight. But this is heavy, foreboding music; Tobin hasn't yet learned how to balance his robust sound-art impulses with footholds for his listeners. He'll get there-- he's frankly too talented not to-- but ISAM feels like a transitional album, for his fans if not for him.
