by RAF KATIGBAK

“It was a little spooky,” says Amon Tobin over the phone. “You’re sort of walking down Ste-Catherine and you see this Tardis-like door, and you walk in. It’s very odd. I more or less expected to find people with giant eyes, you know, mole people, not so much just adjoining malls.” He’s of course talking about Montreal’s so-called underground city, probably the most confounding and unspectacular tourist attraction since the Spam Gardens of ’73.

But Tobin is no longer a tourist here, and he’s definitely no stranger to the underground. A hankering for good record shopping, low rent and “proper seasons” led Tobin to uproot himself from his “perpetually grey” U.K. home and slowly transport his small studio to a spacious new Montreal abode this past June (well, spacious compared to his shoebox-sized flat in Brighton, England).

Trying to pin a label on Tobin’s music is like picking simulated-meat flowers at Spam Gardens—you could try to do it, and certainly some people have, but it just feels wrong. Even though his music gets lumped into the category of electronic music, one listen to any of his first three albums on Ninja Tune (from the sublime jazz of Bricolage to the fractured drum & bass of Permutation to the occasionally spastic sci-fi bossanova funk of Supermodified) and it’s clear to see that Tobin brings out the soul and breathes new life into his machines.

Own-ness injection

When quizzed about the common misconception that electronic music is “cold,” he replies, “People tend put more emphasis on the software and hardware being used than on the people making it. Your tools are what your tools are, so if you’re a cold person, I think you’d be just as cold with a saxophone. There’s already enough cold jazz and cold pop music out there.”

With his latest offering Out From Out Where, Tobin gets set once again to heat things up with his deftly cut-up beats and dark, moody melodies culled from a multitude of vinyl sources, obscure and otherwise. As his last album Supermodified marked a new, perhaps more accessible sound direction for Tobin, Out From Out Where sees him pull further away from the jazz-tinged, Latinesque drum & bass sound he pioneered and popularized several years ago. “For a while it was a close call, I was almost Brazilian Bossa Boy for that month. I think it’s cool that I get to try many different styles of music on the record and people will get it as an album.”

Whereas some artists cop out and simply borrow a hook from an old jazz or blues record then slap a techno/trip-hop beat on it, Tobin’s approach is more subtle and complex. Those same jazz samples are twisted, turned and generally fucked with to the point of being unrecognizable. “I’m not trying to be obscure, but I definitely think there should be more input from the person sampling. If you’re gonna actually make a serious record that isn’t a bootleg and you’re gonna say, ‘It’s my thing,’ then it should be your thing. Even if it’s made of fragments of other people’s music, then it should have enough of your own-ness in there.”

Frost warning

Tobin’s skill lies in straining out the superfluous frequencies from disparate points on the musical map (whether it be bossa, blues or Bollywood soundtracks) and bringing those musical essences together into a cohesive whole where there’s nothing left but pure Tobin. With its sweeping melodies, complex but driving polyrhythms and film-noir atmosphere, the final sound of Out From Out Where is even better than he himself expected. “I’m probably happier with the outcome of this record than I’ve been before. I just wanted to get into the sound and see what happened when I came back out.”

But the question remains, will Tobin’s music be affected by his change of scenery and climate? He’s not sure. “It doesn’t really make a difference where I am as far as making music, but these kinds of things are hard to judge, it’s one of those things that are inevitable.”

One can’t help but think that perhaps the winter will change his mind. “People are trying to scare me with that. It sounds pretty terrifying but you all seem to cope with it, so we’ll see. I’ve still got my place in Brighton, so if I don’t survive the winter, I can always go crawling back.” For the sake of beatheadz and technocrats throughout our fair metropolis, let’s hope not. :

With Bonobo and P-Love at Club Soda
on Saturday, Oct. 12, 9pm, $20, all ages

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