>> Following Amon Tobin's quest for the elusive Mr. Slinky

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

You'd think he'd be a bit more miffed at having missed his chance to have a remix on the soundtrack to the new version of Psycho. But Amon Tobin, the boy-faced beat merchant from Brazil by way of Brighton, isn't all that perturbed.

"A remake of Psycho is not something I'm all that excited about," he shrugs. "As well, I'd be more into doing a whole score for a film, rather than just one or two tracks, just to stick in the soundtrack album. It'd be nice to actually make a score from start to finish."

Tobin may well have that chance this year. He's been approached to provide the sonic backdrop to a short film by Belgian filmmaker Peter Van Huys. "It's kind of a satirical horror film of one sort or another," Tobin explains.

The horror thing seems to follow the guy around, doesn't it? The Psycho remix, for instance, or the use of the tag Cujo for his releases on the Ninebar label (his real name's fine for his more high-profile Ninja Tune work). And he does cite The Exorcist as a masterpiece of pacing, of tension and release. But don't be scared, now.

"I'm not particularly into horror films. I like films that aren't predictable. I think I use some dark sounds in my music, and people tend to associate that with scary images. But I try to stress that I'm putting very light things next to the dark. I'm trying to draw a contrast between light things and dark, scary things and fluffy little things."

True, between the tough, furious percussion and submarine synth groans lurk snatches of cocktail jazz and prison-breakin' palooka soundbites. Tobin's music seems best suited to the new school of crime noir that's popping up from Hollywood to Hong Kong. Gritty desperation, sudden violence, evil laffs and morality painted in shades of grey.

"This is exactly the kind of thing that this director Van Huys is doing," Tobin notes. "He's into making films where there are no good guys or bad guys, or just bad guys and guys who are worse. That's his whole outlook. I guess it's kind of a depressing look at things, but at the same time it's a very humorous thing that's going on. There is this black humour, and I'm into that whole frame of mind."

The boy from Brazil

If that's the case, Tobin must get a chuckle out of setting the listener up for a fall. He builds a air of quiet menace before suddenly dropping a clusterbomb barrage of drum snaps and crashes. "It's all about the dynamics of that sort of emotional journey," he says. "If you're lulled into a false sense of security without realizing it, and then you're hit with something really heavy, I think the impact is that much greater. It's something I try to explore inside actual music arrangement, as well as with the sounds that are used."

One frequently noted element of Tobin's stock of resources is the Brazilian thing, be it smooth samba-isms or balls-out batucada beats. It's an aspect that people seem to latch on to, and one Tobin has been careful to use sparingly, ever since his first foray, a Cujo track from '96 called "The Brazilianaire." "I really don't want to get into a situation where I'm parodying myself," he says.

Of course, being Brazilian by birth, Tobin was raised in direct contact with that nation's immensely varied musical styles. Therefore he has to question the sincerity of the many artists now using them in house, electro-kitsch and retro lounge.

"I try to take the rhythms in different directions, myself. I try to use them in a context they haven't been heard in before--a darker context, perhaps. When you think of Brazilian music, it's generally a happy, party kind of carnival thing, which is fair enough. But I think there's definitely something more substantial going on then a couple of cowbells and a bit of a party in the street.

"There's things in bossa nova that range from real melancholy to pure sex. It's just raw sex, really, and it's kind of been cheesed up over the decades by various cocktail pianists. I hope that it gets reclaimed for what it is, which in my mind is something far more exciting than lounge music."

Got no kick against jazz

Reconfiguring the sounds of his homeland is just part of Tobin's master plan. For the plan to work, Tobin must put his own efforts in perspective--see the rainforest for the trees, so to speak. This principle is suggested in the title of his most recent album, Permutation.

"It's to do with the way the music is put together. Because it's all made with samples. The idea being that all music is a permutation of other music that came before it. I'm trying to draw on the idea that things evolved, they didn't just appear, and that my music is parts of lots of other music that has existed before, and will hopefully become part of music that's made in the future.

"Bricolage [his first full-length for Ninja Tune] was the same idea. It's to do with using things in the way that you understand them, and not necessarily in the way that they were intended to be used. So if you use samples, you're taking things out of their context, and making them work in your own environment."

One thing that Tobin makes work is jazz, stealing rubbery acoustic basslines and jagged chunks of sax, despite the absence of his name on Downbeat's subscription list. "I use a lot of jazz, and music that has a lot of theory and structure behind it. But I'm not a trained musician, I could never pretend to have an academic knowledge.

"There's an analogy that I use sometimes. There's this tribe in Africa that use TV to communicate with the spirits. In my view, and in the view of some anthropologists, it's as valid, even though they're not using the TV the way it was meant. It's the same when I use things that maybe I don't understand, like the sound of a sitar. You could probably write a book... I'm sure there have been books written on the sitar. It's an extremely deep instrument, there are huge social connotations, and I don't know what else, religious, who knows.

"If you're just sampling it, you're taking a very superficial fragment of it. But my whole point is that it's as relevant if you have a superficial understanding as a deep one. If it works for you, if it does whatever you want it to do, then it's working."

Where in the world is Mr. Slinky?

Although Tobin considers himself a studio musician and not a performer, he's afflicted with an overwhelming wanderlust which has yet to subside. Doing DJ sets on Ninja-sponsored junkets seems like the right medicine. "Not to knock England at all, but it's not exactly the most dramatic landscape you're going to come across. When you go out to places like Canada, it's quite stunning, the landscape and the space. It's something I'd like to spend more time exploring."

Apparently, Tobin intends to do that exploring via snowboard, when he spends his Christmas holiday here. "It's going to be painful, I think. I tried skiing once and I was really crap. So I don't know what I'm going to be like at snowboarding, but I'll give it a shot.

"You know what I really want to do, though? Hangliding. That whole thing of staying up there for hours. Because it seems like you can stay up there almost indefinitely! I don't know what you'd do if you need to take a pee or something, but it seems like just outrageously good fun."

Danger sports aside, there must be something at the root Tobin's restlessness, something compelling the soft-spoken studio geek to hang up his headphones and hit the open road. Curiosity? He's been on every continent already. Romantic yearning? He's got a girlfriend. Well, then, what of the rumours about that damn Mr. Slinky ?

"Mr. Slinky! Oh, my god," he howls, "the elusive Mr. Slinky! He's this guy I saw, in a hotel room in Switzerland about a year ago, on a TV show. I don't know if it was David Letterman or what, but it was one of these chat shows. He was this cabaret novelty guy that they brought out to do a stint on the show, and he just blew me away.

"He had this incredible, multicoloured sort of outfit with which he could turn himself inside out, and throw his arm across the stage and follow it with the rest of his body. It's hard to describe... he was, very convincingly, a human slinky. And I've been searching for him ever since, but I haven't had any luck. Hopefully, one day, we'll track him down and see if he wants to do a video."

At Jingxi, Sunday, December 20, 10pm, $15