The Foley Room - Dark Publications

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Similar Items:

•	Out From Out Where
•	Supermodified
•	Pocket Symphony
•	Permutation
•	Bricolage

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com
With Foley Room, Montreal's Amon Tobin throws his torch in with the blazing tradition of full-length works composed in the majority with found sounds. Having formerly made his name as a craftsman of vinyl samples into towering rhythmic dynamos like his fin-de-siecle LP, Supermodified, Tobin tries sampling the world for himself. With microphone in hand and his tape console slung over his shoulder, he captures the timbre of factories, a massive satellite dish, and local avant-garde improvisers with equal zest. One loping highlight comes early in "Big Furry Head," when during a token trip-hop lead-in--all reverb, squiggle, and over-compressed drumbeat--a tiger's hungry growls tears new life across the frequency spectrum, signaling the abyss-deep thump of Tobin's next new groove. Whether he's wandering through lush, meandering string workouts ("Bloodstone") or more aggressive avenues toward beauty ("Ever Falling"), Tobin's gait is ever informed by the beat. But where some contemporary found-sound sculptures like Matthew Herbert's Plat du Jour keep a more strident sampling ethos in the service of musical politics, Tobin's approach clearly reeks with a love of sound manipulation as its own reward: every process an adventure, each completed work a revelation. --Jason Kirk

Album Description
Electronic beatmaking legend Amon Tobin reinvents himself on Foley Room, an album meticulously created from field recordings and other found sounds. Still very much an Amon record, but with fresh new underlying sounds. Includes bonus DVD documenting the process.

Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Amon Tobin does it again March 9, 2007
19 out of 20 found this review helpful

I guess it always was going to happen. Amon Tobin's past releases basically took record sampling as far as it could go. With Foley Room he and a team took to the streets with high-sensitivity microphones to capture source sound to use as the main components to process into the 12 tracks here. They include actual instruments like strings, drums, piano but also lion roars, motorcycle engines, agitated wasps and on and on.

His last album proper (I am maybe wrongly hesitant to call the soundtrack he did for Splinter Cell a true album) 'Out From Out Where' sounded just as the title suggested, from outer space and very sci-fci. 'Foley Room' sounds much more organic, surely in large part to his molding sounds from actual instruments and our environment. But believe me, you would have a hard time placing all the sounds on this album to their actual source as he (as in past releases) molds these samples into sound that rarely has any similarity to that of the original.

'Bloodstone' opens slowly building on a subtle piano trill and strings courtesy the Kronos Quartet. It segues into 'Esther's' with the same piano theme before a monster of bass beats and manipulated motorcycle engine revs bludgeon the listener. Esther's become's Bloodstone's mean older brother on steroids and speed and the album really takes off. 'Keep Your Distance' is as disturbing as any of Tobin's past spook-fests. Play this on the headphones and you will catch yourself checking over your shoulder. 'The Killer's Vanilla'-another great track with a superb outro. 'Foley Room' includes the requisite scatter-breaks that are Tobin's signature. 'Big Furry Head' is titled as a reference to a lion, whose roars are sampled and manipulated to such extent they would probably send the actual animal backpeddaling in fear. As with all of Tobin's records, the final tracks bring the listener down from the chaos that preceded.

Thoroughly recommended.

3 out of 5 stars

Unusual but less engaging work from Tobin March 16, 2007
10 out of 12 found this review helpful

I had great expectations for this CD but found myself disappointed.

Tobin has in the past constructed his music from sampled segments from other people's records, but this time set out with mike in hand to widen his sound palette by using 'found' sounds. Insects, motorcycles, tigers, robots, pots and pans all make the mix. However, Tobin has also thrown in some musicians, including the Kronos Quartet.

For me, this is a case of "more is less". I am more a fan of the beat-driven, rhythmic and melodic parts of Tobin's work. This CD is Tobin at his most abstract to date. Yes, there are beats, but they often dissolve into a landscape of sound. Tobin often manipulates his source material with distortions and tweaking, but I never found myself really being engaged by the end result.

Tobin's sound has often been innovative, and this album delivers plenty of atmospheric soundscapes, but doesn't measure up to other true 'found sound' classics such as Eno & Byrne's seminal My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

3 out of 5 stars

Missing the Amon-ospheric April 3, 2007
3 out of 6 found this review helpful

He pulled a DJ Shadow on us..... couple great tracks but otherwise, experimental sound. He's reaching, but for what? Bring on the Bricolage and Jazz meets experimental. Try his Steel CD compilation..... and the old stuff. Or see him live in concert. This CD to staged....

5 out of 5 stars

2007? Try 2307 May 8, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Foley Room is an industrial breakbeat / drum-n-bass symphony. Amon Tobin not only improves but he vastly raises the bar every single time he releases an album. You know this is the man who made Out from Outwhere and Permutation right away but what you cannot prepare for is the epic nature in which he rings in 2007 with music that is 2307.

I have a deep love for the album format and 'Foley Room' further defines this affection. It allows for structure and limitations to encourage discipline and creativity. The music here is like the intensity of a beautifully emotional 500 lb. beast trapped within a metal cage where he barely fits and has only one small air hole. He is angry and dents the structure while trying to free himself. He becomes hopeless realizing this is impossible. He ponders his life, becomes bitter and angry again. Somehow, we feel like he got himself into this.

Take that for what you will, but the only album I can compare this to is 'Endtroducing...' and that is a stretch because this is much more intense and the songs are mostly shorter in length (my only gripe because these songs could be of brilliantly epic length to match the mood). But the darkness and emotion is evident and delves deeper into actual human psyche than I'd say nearly ALL of, at least, electronic music.

Amon Tobin has officially been ordained into the vanguard of music's elite.

5 out of 5 stars

Headphone Commute Review January 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

If Ninja Tune was entirely in its own music genre (and I'd like to claim that it is), then it would be hard for its roster to compete with its staple artist, Brazilian born Amon Adonai Santos de Aravjo Tobin, who for over a decade has graced our ears with abstract downtempo trip hop and experimental jazzy breaks. Such is the case with Foley Room, an organic and at times dark album, that swirls and loops through filtered sweeps and broken beats. For his sixth release, Tobin abandoned his perfected technique of sampling from dug up vinyl, and built an ambitious collage of field and studio recordings with the help of The Kronos Quartet, Stefan Schneider (To Rococo Rot) and harpist Sarah Page. The elaborately cut up bits and pieces of familiar every day sounds form into an organized chaos of dissonant elastic melodies powdered with bouncy rhythms and dropped into a chamber, which the sound effect designers call "the foley room".

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