Amon Tobin - Foley Room

Amon Tobin
Foley Room
Ninja Tune, 2007

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to get a guided tour of CBC’s Foley studio from the resident sound technician. It was pretty incredible. She explained how she created the sound of many oars in a lake with a bathtub, some baffles, and a few strategically placed microphones. She took me down a long, gravel-filled hallway, noting how the echo deadened as we walked further, until the crunching sound underneath us was completely isolated. The craziest thing, though, was she said she is so attuned to listening for sounds-within-sounds that she can wake up and know whether it is going to rain or not by the sound of the trains by her house; the sound of the train differs, she explained, depending on the barometric pressure.

When she said this, the only sound in the room was my mind being blown.

So it is with Amon Tobin’s latest release, Foley Room. Recorded in various settings around various cities, the album shows Tobin utilizing different source material for his experimental, head-nodding electronics. After many years of success cutting and re-sampling, this album marks Tobin’s first attempts to make an electronically-inspired album that combines found sound and “real” instruments. The concept is not especially new, as Tobin acknowledges on the DVD that accompanies the disc, but I have a lot of respect for an artist who is willing to push themselves toward change, and broaden their sound. And Tobin’s previous work informs Foley Room as well: there are thickly thudding bass sounds, high-end twitters and whirs, and an overall drive that seems out of keeping with such an experimental album. However, on this release, those electro sounds are provided by Kronos Quartet, the Bell Orchestre and field recordings from silos, farms and other non-traditional recording spaces.

My only complaint about Foley Room is that it seems to still root itself firmly on the dance floor, whereas I would have liked more tracks that let the sounds grr and whorl in their own beauty. However, this is merely a matter of taste (aaaaand the fact I almost never go dancing), and Foley Room remains an interesting, texturally rich album worth exploring.

On tour through europe now.