Amon Tobin

We caught up with the innovative musician, composer and producer ahead of new album Fear In A Handful Of Dust

Amon Tobin’s refusal to stand still is an uncanny reflection of his upbringing. Born in Brazil, he spent his formative years living in Morocco and various locations in Europe, including Brighton. It was here the Brazilian first started experimenting with tape decks and samplers, impelled by the burgeoning drum & bass scene. His debut release under the name Cujo immediately turned heads. Ninja Tune spotted his talent and signed him up in 1996, and he’s remained there ever since.

The last two decades have seen Tobin become a rare example of an electronic producer whose work has remained both uniquely relevant and timeless. Whether his advanced synthetic processing is sample-based, predicated on found sounds, software emulations, hardware or a combination of each, Tobin always seems to find a new vocabulary. Inspired by the self-imposed constraints of some well-chosen modular gear, his latest album, Fear In

A Handful Of Dust, once again innovatively re-evaluates his past-meets-future aesthetic.

Apart from being highly experimental, your music has always had an atmospheric, soundtrack vibe. What interested you in this over other more traditional paths?

“I think what happened is that I couldn’t relate to the music I liked in a cultural sense. I was always very curious as to why I liked something and how I could better understand how it was made, and that basic curiosity opened me to a certain approach to production. It’s also down to this wonderful, mysterious, almost magical, thing you get from working with synthesis when you really start to examine what makes a sound and how a vibration works. You start to get very connected with how the world works, physics and how that relationship is analogous to a lot of the things you’re trying to explore in your placement and editing of sound. I find a real magic in the technical side of things, a sense of discovery, and I feel there are things yet to be discovered. That still makes me really excited to get up in the morning and make tunes.”

You used an Amstrad Studio 100 4-Track initially. Did that teach you about recording?

“That was probably my first device after using a twin tape deck to make my own edits. It featured a luxurious four tracks of tape and was obviously garbage because the faders were drawn on with pencil. It was a very lo-fi piece of kit, but a lot of people would probably agree that what you do creatively is often inside some very stringent limits. You can sit in front of 1,000 different plugins and have no sense of what to do, or you can give yourself a very narrow set of options and try to escape from that little box you’re in and make something happen. That’s when you become creative, so limitations are a great obstacle to have. Throughout my development in the studio, I’ve been very careful not to embellish myself with too many gadgets and toys because I feel, first, it’s unnecessary and, second, I like that process of squeezing and rinsing.”

It’s more about the decisions you make rather than the gear you employ…

“The only things you can really take credit for, creatively, are the decisions you make. It’s not so much the instruments you play or how good your voice or technique might be, but what you’ve decided to leave in or out – the creative editing process in your mind. It makes no difference to me whether you’re finding sounds in a synthesiser or guitar; your creative contribution is really what you’ve decided to keep and how you structured the melody and rhythm.”

So your curiosity doesn’t stretch to new gear?

“I tend to find that gear generally doesn’t tend to do anything new but make the things you always did a little easier. It’s either more affordable or efficient, or there’s less moves to get to the final stage. There’s only so many frequencies, notes and chords, and only so many ways you can mix a bunch of sounds together for them to balance correctly. The equipment is just a means to an end, but if you’ve become stuck in a mode of working for a while, there are different approaches that are useful to take. It’s all about the little psychological games you play with yourself to ensure you don’t get stuck in templates or trapped in your own way of working. There’s a price to efficiency I think, so it’s really worth trying completely new approaches with new bits of equipment just for that.”

Can you give an example of that?

“In the last 10 years or so, I’ve got interested in working strictly with analogue stuff that’s really inconvenient and takes way longer than a VST might, but the point is I’m approaching things in a way that I otherwise wouldn’t and things are being revealed to me that might have not have been.”

So whereas people often tend to rely on the technology for creative impetus, simply changing the approach can be just as creative?

“In the end, there’s a lot of marketing going on and it’s comforting to think it’s not you, it’s your gear [ laughs]. People think if they buy some shit they will sound just like this guy, and it’s a very appealing idea, but it’s not true. You have to imagine people have been making amazing records for years without any of the gear that is apparently invaluable now. The push forward is in your own mind, not the gear you’ve got. But gear is still a beautiful thing; I’m as much a fetishist as anyone else. I love my relationship with gear, and it probably does inform the music because if you’re really enjoying working with a particular instrument it’s collaborating with you to some extent, whereas if you’re scrolling banks of presets on some giant VST, I wonder if the same joy is present.”

Technology has had a massive influence on certain genres, such as the 808 in hip-hop and techno. Has it run rampant to a level where its ability to have that influence is now lessened?

“I’d be reluctant to say that. I know what you’re getting at and think you’re right to an extent. Things like the Akai MPC changed our approach to programming drums – they shaped the sound. You can look at drum & bass in the early ’90s and how those E-mu and Akai samplers had such a characteristic sound. Obviously, the 303 and 808 helped form genres of music, even something like Fruity Loops in the ’90s affected whole genres of music, but that’s a different conversation to mixing and production. I’m not sure if the same thing applies in terms of creative direction.” Is there a compromise to be made between being totally self-indulgent with sound design and offering an olive branch to the listener?

“Not really. The thing about making stuff that other people listen to is you don’t really have control over how they might anticipate that, so it’s an act of folly to try and predetermine it. I’m sure it’s something every artist struggles with if they’ve had any success with a record, but I think it’s a bit arrogant to imagine that you have an idea of what people might want. Secondly, what they liked about you to begin

with is that you did what you wanted, so the idea of making it more palatable to people by making it less esoteric seems very patronising to me. Everybody loses at that point – you don’t get to really explore what you’d like to do and the people hearing it get patted on the head and told this is all you can handle. I don’t really hold back at all and just hope other people also find that interesting. Of course, I want people to like what I do – I just can’t guarantee that they will.”

Foley Room and ISAM seemed to have quite a specific purpose in terms of your adoption of field recordings; is that the case with Fear In A Handful Of Dust?

“There’s been slow progress over the years. I started making records years ago from little fragments of found sound and by the time I got to Foley Room I was recording those found sounds from, obviously, Foley and field recordings. With ISAM, I was processing those recordings and bringing them into a very digital realm with heavy, advanced DSP processing and seeing what I could do with very little, like expanding a tiny sound into a whole range of different things. I was concerned with getting as close as possible to exactly what I wanted and not allowing happy accidents at all. I felt a great sense of achievement in that, but I also feel a certain amount of spontaneity gets crushed when you do that. So for this record, I took an analogue route and wanted to embrace the imperfections again. If you listen back to my early records, the production’s terrible, but the concern was the musical ideas – there was a certain playfulness.”

Has embracing those imperfections created a significant change in your sound?

“While I feel very proud of my technical achievements on albums like ISAM, I also recognise that sometimes it felt stifled by my own tyrannical will to make it exactly what I wanted. When you listen to this record, it won’t sound anywhere near as polished as ISAM. It will be dusty and imperfect, but with that comes a lot of character and emotion that is vital too.”

The imperfections are to do with your use of analogue technology as opposed to digital?

“Very much so. There’s probably way too much hiss on a lot of the new stuff, and distortion, which is quite nice because it’s not digital. A lot of the percussive sounds were Buchla-powered, and it’s not the easiest thing to control. You have a framework within which you want it to work, but you also have to give it room to breathe so it can be what it is. You can EQ anything, so I don’t think the source sound is that important, but whereas before there might have been two or three sounds that I would have recorded in isolation and given myself total freedom to micro edit, because of the way the analogue gear is interacting, recording those sounds separately and mixing them afterwards means you lose what they give to each other. In those moments, you just have to take a decision whether it’s worth the sacrifice later to go back in and edit.”

“I don’t really hold back at all and just hope other people also find that interesting”

In the early days your music was very breakbeat driven; now the beats seem almost indivisible from the music or non-existent even…

“That’s right on the money. I was doing too many things within one song, trying to create something that could be played in a club but also have some nuance and be very exploratory. Those two things are often at odds with each other, so I split them entirely and decided to make beats with my Two Fingers project and have my own vanish-up-myown-arse explorations under my own name where I could create really uncompromising landscapes without having to worry about anyone having to nod their head. Since then, I’ve split into further lanes. Specifically on drum programming, there’s a project on my new label Nomark called Only Child Tyrant. The first single’s going to be released in May, and that’s purely me having loads of fun programming breaks and drums and making really catchy riffs. I think there’s space for all these things to exist and develop in parallel.”

The album track Freeformed stands out… When you’re recording a deeply atmospheric track like that, do you write to a theme?

“Honestly, I don’t think visually at all. When I make music, the melodies, rhythms and general structure of the arrangement are something I map out and try to realise with the equipment. There’s a default position with instrumental music where if it doesn’t have lyrics people almost assume it’s incomplete. I understand that point of view, but it’s not one I share. I feel these things are finished as they are and don’t need a visual or a narrative to them.”

Is there a template for creating an Amon Tobin track or is your approach different every time?

“I try to avoid making templates because I feel they might cheat me out of discovering something. Each track is a very well-defined thing in my mind and by the time it’s finished, it’s either a lot worse or better than I’d imagined [ laughs]. But it is close; otherwise I’m just pissing around. I never understood the value of jamming. I like arrangements and structure, and I realise they’re not always apparent in what I do, but they’re definitely there. For anything to have meaning it has to have intention.”

How are you generating some of the sounds, for example, on Milk Millionaire, which sounds almost entirely constructed from samples?

“I haven’t used samples in my music since the early 2000s. I was talking to somebody recently about the value of repetition. With synthesisers, it’s funny how a lot of the time you have the ability to record a repeating phrase over many bars and each time it will be slightly different – a nuanced change in the timbre of the sound over time. That’s valuable sometimes, but what’s also valuable is recording one bar and looping it. There’s something about the exact repeat of a short phrase that’s really compelling and the combination of those things can be quite powerful. I’d have to listen back to Milk

Millionaire, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I’d recorded short phrases and cycled them to have a

sampled feel. It might also have a lot to do with the Mellotron. I have a digital/hardware version made in Stockholm. It feels lovely to play but still sounds like a horror show – awful and lovely at the same time. It’s also tape loop-based, so has that perfect repeat characteristic.”

The track also has some very traditional piano and horn-type sounds. Your music always sounds modern yet somehow set in the past…

“I think nostalgia in music has a great power. That, and smell, is the closest thing we have to a time machine, so it would be a shame not to use that to your advantage creatively and psychologically. So I absolutely feel this sense of another time being introduced into something that’s quite modern and out of context. The horn sounds come from a little Eurorack filter from Cwejman. It’s a very short delay feedback loop blended with resonance to a point where it creates flute or brass instrument sounds. All the percussion on this record is down to that lovely combination of low-pass gates and complex oscillators that have these rich, high frequencies, so you end up with wooden, acoustic-sounding percussion. It’s all synthesised, but in my mind sounds acoustic – and I love that blend of abstract futurism and something primal.”

How much work goes into balancing the frequencies of the sounds? Is it something you do by ear or are you more analytical than that?

“It’s always emotionally driven for me. Some people are very objective and just work visually, and it works really well for them, but my music’s not perfectly treated, there’s some life in there. Yes, I can get lost in all kinds of wormholes and spend four days making the snare I want, but I also want to make sure that my own selfish needs are met, which involves enjoying, exploring and learning – so if my snare isn’t fucking perfect, it’s not perfect, or if I’ve got too much compression or reverb, then as long as I feel I’ve communicated what I wanted, that’s where I want the track to be. Like I say, that’s a relatively new thing. I had that control at the start, now I’m trying to consciously let go of it. I’ve always tried to create an over-arc of an arrangement. It’s like a big sketch, so I’ll make the whole track with placeholders and approximations of sounds that I know I want then zoom further and further into the sounds that should be there until it’s finished. That works for me because I’ve mapped out the track in my mind; I’m not trying to discover it as I make it.”

You mentioned modular and limitations, but most people who go down that rabbit hole don’t know when to stop…

“I resisted modular for years. I’m not a hobbyist and didn’t want my whole process to go down the shitter because I was noodling endlessly with a module. I wanted them to be part of the process not a distraction, so I’ve let that stuff in gradually over the years. I have one beautiful Buchla system, one Eurorack system and a couple of other devices and tend to replace rather than build on that.”

One instrument that interests us is the Continuum Fingerboard… It seems quite integral to how you play sounds

“It’s made by Haken Audio, which is a really small operation. It’s such a beautifully made instrument – so responsive and powerful, I’ve been using it since ISAM as a central controller. There’s a track called

Vipers Follow You on the record and it was used to play a hybrid instrument I’d made that was a mixture of a double bass and a sitar. I played it on the Continuum like a percussion instrument, but it feels more like playing a guitar than a keyboard.”

Are you still using Cubase, and what will you typically turn to within the software realm to manipulate sounds?

“I still love Cubase, not because it’s better than anything else, I’ve just got an affinity for it. It’s probably the more interesting VST platform for what I like to do and I don’t really use that many VSTs. I like some of the IRCAM reverbs and UAD stuff. FabFilter’s a real workhorse – I like how their interfaces don’t try to look like actual analogue gear. Soundtoys do a few nice things, but honestly, most of the stuff I do is outboard, and I don’t have tons of that either – just one or two compressors and a nice EQ. I still have my Eventide H8000FW, a Clariphonic equaliser for highs and I put my synths through some nice preamps.”

Are the tracks as busy as they seem?

“I feel a bit defeated when I have towers of tracks because I feel like I’ve probably done something wrong at that point. The strongest stuff I do usually hasn’t been fucked with that much, but when I’ve got six layers for a kick drum I know I’m struggling.”

How do you feel about how consumers listen to music now, for example, on a phone or laptop?

“Here’s where I get to sound like a grumpy old man. Obviously, you can’t be prescriptive on how people listen to what they do, and if they listen to my music in any way, great, but fuck listening to any music on a phone or a laptop. It seems so counter-productive. You don’t have to have super-lovely headphones or expensive speakers, but if you’re going to spend any time doing something I feel you should at least involve yourself in the process and give yourself time to absorb it.”

Your live shows are visually stunning… Is this something you plan to go further with?

“ISAM was a reaction in some ways to the fact that playing electronic music live is a contradiction. If you’re standing there with a computer, it’s a very boring show to watch, so the whole point was to make something visually compelling out of a listening experience that’s inherently dull to watch. Obviously, that was quite successful, but I’ve now pretty much priced myself out of my own market. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pull together the technology I’ve been waiting for to make another stupid light show, which would be really fun to do.”