Amon Tobin

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Amon Tobin is a musician, DJ, and producer known for his massive sound walls of sampled jazz fused with drum and bass and samba.

Amon Adonai Santos de Araujo Tobin was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He relocated to England at an early age, where hip hop, blues and jazz caught his interest. He released four EPs and an album, Adventures in Foam, under the name Cujo, before he signed with Ninja Tune in late 1996. He has since released four critically acclaimed albums under his own name. After a three-year hiatus from releasing any major original work, he was contracted by video game company Ubisoft to compose the soundtrack for Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, released in 2005.

Tobin is renowned for his creative use of sampling, from old recordings to motorcycles (Supermodified) and even the acoustics of buildings (Out From Out Where) which are stretched and skewed often beyond recognition. Resonances, delays, reverbs and a wide variety of sound effects also contribute to transform what was once familiar into something grotesque, unnatural but nonetheless appealing.

His intense and complex compositions often evoke mystery, suspense and excitement in the listener. Psychedelic ambiences are frequently blended with retro-jazz beats, creating an unique barrier of apparently incoherent sound layers. Tobin manages, however, to extract order from this acoustic chaos. This uniqueness and complexity make the task of categorizing his music a difficult one. Each of his albums unchart a new realm of polyrhythms and soundscapes.

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