for your * pleasure – i’m serious, introduce me
By Kervin | March 11, 2010 | 1 Comment
what up, peeps. i am overworked and underslept, which always makes for interesting revelations when i go back and re-read what i’ve typed a few days after the fact. so let’s all venture down the rabbit-hole to see how my slinky psychology and flimsy philosophies manifest destiny the shit out of this infinite canvas, shall we? speaking of how people see the world, and to tie this segment of FOR MY OWN DAMN PLEASURE, MAYBE YOURS TOO IF IT TURNS OUT YOU LIKE IT; THAT WOULD BE GOOD, I WOULD LIKE IT IF I SHARED SOME THINGS IN COMMON WITH MY READERS into the others, i hereby must present another group/dj who exists in a dark catacomb in the back, water-stained hallway of a literally-underground goth club, he who goes by the title AMON TOBIN.
i would like to believe that my good friend amon (we’ve shared a few candle-light cannibal dinners together) sees his world through a chipped, not necessarily cracked, diffusion filter precariously rigged with masking tape to a holga packed with a film far too low a speed to properly expose all the composed elements in the viewfinder. that’s to say, dark, gloomy, fuzzy, noisy, and so on. or at least, that’s what his music would like to convey.
supermodified - 2000
supermodified, which came out ten years ago, is not a well-guarded secret, which is great. spooky music of this caliber shouldn’t dwell in the shadows, no, it should be the shadows. and though you are at first given a strict dance sensibility, respected light-side dj, pulsing light and friendly-enough club vibe as the album starts, that’s definitely as light as it will get– the longer you listen, the further you are pulled into a dark hole, maybe a k-hole, with all sorts of twisting abstract smoke shapes in your peripherals. around all the sworled concoctions of unrecognizable, spooky samples, there’s a sort of lofty headiness that i decipher as both decidedly uplifting and maniacally crushing– so it’s definitely a good-headphones sort of album, certainly one you should find in FLAC lossless or LAME mp3 with a 192kbps encoding minimum. here, let’s take a taste:
now i’ve definitely heard amon tobin described as cut’n'paste jazz, which i think is appropriate, but not necessarily all-encompassing. that’s like calling ska “jazz punk.” there are horns, there’s some fretless bass, but i’ll be damned if i’d show this to my pops with the jazz angle. a better slew of arbitrary nomenclature would be NEO-GOTH-REVIVALIST-INDUSTRIAL-MUSH-POP, since i would expect the asymmetrical-blue-haircut, jhonen vasquez, knows-all-shades-of-black, thick-eyeliner crowd to willingly and peacefully listen to this album while they tag dark alleys at three-am tripping balls all the while. if you know any ladies whom fit this bill, please introduce me. or even better, LYNCHIAN-GROTESK, since this album plays like a david lynch movie does– nothing makes any sense, then it’s over and you’re sitting in the dark and scared shitless and you have to call your film-savvy friend david maron to help you decipher the various visual and auditory clues so you can go to sleep without having to worry about what the fuck do those mice even mean, their dialogue is so sporadic and nonsensical and backed by a super-sterile laugh track, is it a commentary on sitcoms or nuclear families or some twisted perspective of the human condition, i just don’t get it.
know what– i like this album so much i’m going to give y’all another track to sit on.
