Supermodified

Supermodified

ASIN: B00004TKNV

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com's Best of 2000
Amon Tobin's off-kilter rhythms and jazzy samples create a beautiful mess on Supermodified. Feeding off Latin rhythms, downtempo beats, and wildly adventurous musical jumbles, Tobin's manic bliss never allows the songs to wander, working a sense of method into a sea of crazy atmospheres. The result is focused, enticing, and fascinating. --Matthew Cooke

Amazon.com
At the junction of jazz and breakbeat science, Amon Tobin is one of the undisputed masters. Instead of drawing on jazz samples and styles as a sort of prepackaged cultural signifier, he's engaged in the cross-fertilization and recontextualizing that many aspire to but not so many achieve. On this release, he casts his net farther afield--the smoky nightclub trumpets and sultry beats of 1998's Permutation are still present, but the hummingly intense electronics and roiling drums on tracks like "Rhino Jockey" leave the jazz references pretty far behind. The track "Precursor" uses what is called "vocal percussion" to emulate the click-and-pop assemblages of some of the farther out German electronic experimentalists and segues neatly into the down-tempo groove of "Saboteur," which is built on a bottle-clinking percussive sample from obscure '60s blues-rock outfit the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation. "Keepin' It Steel" is reminiscent of Stereolab in a way, with a pleasantly lazy tempo that manages the neat trick of sounding like it's in an odd-metre time signature when it's not, punctuated by horns that evoke a '70s reggae record. --Bob Bannister

Tracks:

Get Your Snack On
Four Ton Mantis
Slowly
Marine Machines
Golfer vrs Boxer
Deo
Precursor
Saboteur
Chocolate Lovely
Rhino Jockey
Keepin' It Steel
Natureland

Amazon.com's Best of 2000

Amon Tobin's off-kilter rhythms and jazzy samples create a beautiful mess on Supermodified. Feeding off Latin rhythms, downtempo beats, and wildly adventurous musical jumbles, Tobin's manic bliss never allows the songs to wander, working a sense of method into a sea of crazy atmospheres. The result is focused, enticing, and fascinating. --Matthew Cooke

Amazon.com

At the junction of jazz and breakbeat science, Amon Tobin is one of the undisputed masters. Instead of drawing on jazz samples and styles as a sort of prepackaged cultural signifier, he's engaged in the cross-fertilization and recontextualizing that many aspire to but not so many achieve. On this release, he casts his net farther afield--the smoky nightclub trumpets and sultry beats of 1998's Permutation are still present, but the hummingly intense electronics and roiling drums on tracks like "Rhino Jockey" leave the jazz references pretty far behind. The track "Precursor" uses what is called "vocal percussion" to emulate the click-and-pop assemblages of some of the farther out German electronic experimentalists and segues neatly into the down-tempo groove of "Saboteur," which is built on a bottle-clinking percussive sample from obscure '60s blues-rock outfit the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation. "Keepin' It Steel" is reminiscent of Stereolab in a way, with a pleasantly lazy tempo that manages the neat trick of sounding like it's in an odd-metre time signature when it's not, punctuated by horns that evoke a '70s reggae record. --Bob Bannister

Customer Reviews:

A CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE!.......2006-10-17

It will jump from your speakers & demand attention! You've been warned...

Complex and Beautiful.......2006-08-19

It is hard to overstate how much impact this album had on me. Amon Tobin captured everything I love about electronic music here, composing a dynamic, dark and often surreal sound-scape. "Slowly," my favorite track, is a beautiful, somber experience that effortlessly blends jazzy notes with a down tempo beat. "Four Ton Mantis" is a fantastic and eerie piece with alternately slow and driving beats that you can't help but be enraptured with. "Rhino Jockey" seems to swell with breathless excitement with its hard hitting, relentless energy. "Get Your Snack On," "Golfer vs Boxer," and "Chocolate Lovely" are also not to be missed. Of all of Tobin's excellent work, I believe Supermodified is truly his best. You are doing yourself a disservice if you skip this album.

True Artist.......2006-02-20

I believe there are very few true artist in this day and age and Amon Tobin is one of them. Original, chic, innovative, unique, beautiful... absolutely beautiful.

Decade's best.......2005-04-18

Amon Tobin is simply a genius. I've said it before, and I will say it again: he is a genius. Right before he left the planet to create alien symphonies from the Virgo Complex, he left us this final album that sounds like it came from the Earth's soil after having been buried by an alien race who visited us millions of years ago with vastly superior technology to what we'll ever have. If that doesn't give you an indication of what this album sounds like, only listening to it ever will. The only misstep is possibly "Precursor" featuring the fire-breathing mouth percussion of Quadriceptor. Aside from that, this album is just out of the world. Trust me, once you hear it, music will never sound the same for you. Ever. Glorious!

I'm not worthy.......2004-11-02

Very few performers in popular music truly earn the label "artist," and even fewer can ever be said to occupy a genre of their own, but in the case of Amon Tobin the label is more than apt. Electronic music, or at least the more respectable branch of it, is generally associated with the intellectual abstractions of such artists as Aphex Twin and Autechre, but Amon adds his own twists to the genre with his crossbreeding of electronica and the music of his native Brazil. While Amon's most recent album, Out From Out Where, was an excellent release, Supermodified still stands as his best work so far, a brilliant set that should expand minds as easily as it expands boundaries.

Filled with fractured beats and ominous atmospheres, Supermodified is a work of dizzying intricacy and variety that offers something different on every track and every listen. Befitting an imagination so restless, there are plenty of excursions into areas where most composers of this ilk would fear to tread: the jumbled drum beats of the head-spinning opener "Get Your Snack On" would sound right at home on a jazz fusion album, and other tracks provide glimpses at light jazz, hip-hop and even some Middle Eastern sounds. Strings, horns, and crazed percussion all find their way into the mix somewhere, but whatever it happens to be doing at a particular moment, what's perhaps most notable about this album is Tobin's use of subtle shadings to achieve a contrast of light and dark more suited to a classic King Crimson album than a dance floor.

It's really this element that makes Tobin's work so compelling: although it's obviously grounded in the electronic genre, it manages to create the sort of mood and ambience that's hard enough to create with live instruments but almost impossible for a DJ to replicate. Supermodified truly is a work of stunning music, one that all open-minded listeners are urged to pick up immediately.

Average customer rating:

Enough to chew your fingers off
A musical genius

Supermodified
Amon Tobin
Manufacturer: Ninja
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

IDM | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00004TKBO
Release Date: 2000-05-03

Customer Reviews:

Enough to chew your fingers off.......2003-02-13

Amon Tobin is an electronic wizard and if you haven't heard or understood this by now "Supermodified" in another powered example.

As if Fila Brazillia moved too a neo appocalyptic interface with some violent Richard James and made thier own set of "A-pexed" Twins. Amon Tobin makes music so unique to downtempo, dub, electronic music that even the eclectic soul or maybe even rivethead and D&B raver culture would celebrate Amons terribly haunting and unique style.

For even further effect try his untouchable "Out From Out Where". While you may truley enjoy "Supermodified", you may want to eat "Out From Out Where" like its your last electronic meal.

A musical genius.......2000-09-23

What Amon tobin has brought to music is quite incredible. His sound is an eclectic one, and yet a very distinct one. He has been compared to Ennio Morricone, Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus, and other greats. He brings a sense of peculiar, interesting darkness and mystery, and yet this is often permeated with beats and melodies that are happily content or sometimes even sharply beautiful.

Amon Tobin is a creative genius and worthy of much respect, praise, and, most importantly, appreciation. His music is compelling and at times soothing. Sometimes you want to move; sometimes you want to sit perfectly still.

This particular album was the first I bought of his. I discovered by chance when I was in a store that had a 100 disc changer set on random. 'Supermodified' was in the batch, and I heard the seventh track 'Precursor' featuring Quadraceptor with 'velocity beatboxing.' Quite simply, I thought it was some of the coolest, most daring music I'd ever heard. It sounded like a fraggle on crack. And, to my surprise, the rest of the album was completely different and in fact more impressive.

The album is a must buy for anyone with an open mind and a love for rapturous melodies as well as funky bass and grooving beats.

Supermodified (+1 Bonus Track)
Average customer rating:
Supermodified (+1 Bonus Track)
Amon Tobin
Manufacturer: Toysf
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00004U2QP
Release Date: 2000-05-24

Album Description

Limited 7 inch release of third single is another slab of the greatest songwriting to come out of Britain in years. Short, sharp, & like a knee to the groin, this is music to make you howl at the sky & dance like a lunatic. The title track is backed with

Album Details

Japanese Version featuring a Bonus Track: Bad Sex (Featuring Chris Morris); Otherwise Only Available on the Vinyl Single for 'slowly'.

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