Amon Tobin Concert Review (599 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.72 on 30 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by charminglybeef (View user info) at 2007-07-04 01:00:28 EDT
Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC
June 22nd, 2007
--
How do you feel about sound thundering through you -- vibrating in your lungs? Setting your nut-hair on end? Tongue-fucking your nipples?
For some, what I am about to say is precisely the reason they hate Amon Tobin:
Let's forget about the music for a moment. Let's talk about the sound. The overall sound -- so incredible in its quality and volume and construction that at times it seems to be all that there is: the sound. Blurring the lines between music and engineering; making you feel not with a melody or a beat, but with a marriage of frequencies entirely unforgivable. With a rattling of the air. With what essentially amounts to an energy. Not only heard, but felt, undeniably, through every inch of your human casing.
And for some, that's all there is to it: noise.
But believe me friends, lurking beneath these apocalyptic descensions of alternating layers of sub-sonic vibration and crunching digital effects -- is the beat. Suggested. Hinted at. Pushed. Pulled. And ultimately and triumphantly, exposed with the nod of a head and flick of a wrist.
Amon Tobin.
The master of ear-piercing crescendos of bass, that miraculously break out clean and crisp and clear, but only when compared to the horrible things you had been hearing but a moment before. They drive and thump and explode -- hot and heavy and electric from the speakers -- so intense you can almost see them arc from the black monoliths all around you and into the ear drums of the nearest, lucky ears.
Tesla would be proud, man.
He would nod a stern nod of approval with each collapse of a crowd-member to the floor; shake his head in amazement as they writhed and spasmed in episodes of syncopated drum-shot and bass induced epileptic shock.
Scores of people died at this show.
I'm speaking figuratively, of course. I'm speaking of the death of people's faith in their ability to dance; speaking of those dusty flashes in the crowd I kept seeing after the music descended into the bowels of the earth, where monsters of craggy molten rock and the hardest metals of the universe were having an enormous crystal meth fueled orgy.
--after the mics and cameras would stop and go dark and hiss and you found yourself decked out to the nines and dancing in The Caprice -- feeling top 40 rattle and shatter your bones -- but wait! It's not top 40, it's dance hall shit from your worst nightmares. It's Robert Louis Pickton up there, sweating out the sick grooves he heard in his head as he killed all those east-side prostitutes.
--and it really opens up and bursts out crisp and sharp and massive and it's as if your mind has too; and your body follows -- unzipping at the crown of your head and falling to either side of you like a melon halved by a hatchet and there's this great explosion of light and dust as you emerge -- a phoenix from the ashes of your former head-nodding.
All around you, the same fiery transformations. Compelled to repeat, as electronica is wont to do. Building up, crumbing down. Constructing and then demolishing. Everything new and shiny and gorgeous meeting the same fate: annihilation.
You pray: "no, Mr Amon Tobin sir -- please! I liked that one. Don't make it go away!"
But his hunger for destruction is insatiable. As much as the man lusts after giving life to these tasty beats, he lusts even more after their demise. Everything you've grown to love inevitably ends up as a twisted, hulking, burning mess of death and carnage.
And it is in these moments that you hate him the most. When he brings the trembling air to its melting point and your ears to their bleeding point and you hope and pray and plead he will step back into sanity for long enough for you to find the beat again and nod your head and pop your shoulders.
You look around at the star-eyed crowd. They want the same thing. They shift their weight from foot to foot -- unsure of just what to do but knowing exactly what they want: the beat. The Beat!
The twisted, cruel, thundering beat of the master of bass and heavy, slick grooves.
He nods his head and smokes his cigarette -- a soft red speck floating on the stage -- the beacon of the beat. The place to look when you're lost. What's the red dot doing? What does it say I should be doing?
It says you should smarten the fuck up and stop listening to Amon Tobin on those tiny, tinny in-ear headphones.
It says you should buy five-thousand Marshall stacks and a nuclear power plant and plug it all in and toss it in the bathtub with ya.
It says Amon Tobin doesn't endorse my Robert Louis Pickton reference.
User Reviews
Submitted by Spam (user info) at 2007-07-06 06:00:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2007-07-05 12:28:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't know who that is but I understand the beauty and healing of music.
--
AHAHAHAAH!!!
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2007-07-05 12:28:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't know who that is but I understand the beauty and healing of music.
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2007-07-05 12:27:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Who the fuck is Amon Tobin? Don't bother telling me because I don't care.
Nice work though, it's actually really well written and the imagery was great.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2007-07-05 09:45:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I am descending into hell. But I will rise.
Submitted by i_can_get_you_a_toe (user info) at 2007-07-04 17:02:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I have absolutely no idea what this post was about. But it was done so beautifully.
Submitted by Spam (user info) at 2007-07-04 15:01:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Actually, Tobin Refernaces or not, this was Fucking Ace.
I doff my cap to you sir.
Submitted by Spam (user info) at 2007-07-04 14:56:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Haven't read it, but the mearest mention of AMon Tobin Guarentees you +2's for eternity.
He peaked at Out From Out Where though.
Submitted by BobLobla (user info) at 2007-07-04 11:29:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-07-04 11:16:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-07-04 11:15:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by ChairFace (user info) at 2007-07-04 10:19:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I miss those days, now far gone, of sitting in a Tonka black monolith whilst some of the masters spun.
Submitted by ICO (user info) at 2007-07-04 06:38:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Sounds like a mushroom trip, man.
Submitted by ChristPuncher (user info) at 2007-07-04 03:34:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1183534419694730386
YOU HAVE BEEN BEEBED U TOILET OF MUSICAL TASTES
Submitted by messmind (user info) at 2007-07-04 03:10:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
great shit!
Submitted by ChristPuncher (user info) at 2007-07-04 02:56:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:31:53 CDT (#)
Ranking: 0
It's true. They play it in elevators and outside convenience stores to keep the kids away.
Why, I first heard Amon Tobin while chugging peach schnapps from a water bottle infront of the 7-11 in fifth grade.
And I bet Habeeb likes 'Boston'.
I'm done.
------------------------------------------------------
FUCK BOSTON IN THE CLIT
THE VILAGE AND THE BAND
IM DONE FAG
HAHAHA U LOVE ELEVATOR MUSIC
WOOO
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-07-04 02:31:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
It's true. They play it in elevators and outside convenience stores to keep the kids away.
Why, I first heard Amon Tobin while chugging peach schnapps from a water bottle infront of the 7-11 in fifth grade.
And I bet Habeeb likes 'Boston'.
I'm done.
Submitted by ChristPuncher (user info) at 2007-07-04 02:23:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:14:34 CDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Haha -- Habeeb, if you could read you probably would have liked this.
Stagger, I rated you, hard, and in the mouth.
-------------------------------------------------
YEAH YEAH IF I COULD REED
SO YOU MADE A FEW FUNNIES HERE AND THERE
FACT REMAINS FACT U SLAG
U LIKE ELAVATOR MUSIC WITH LOUD AMPS
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
GO CUBS WOO
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-07-04 02:23:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Indeed you did, and I thank you.
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-07-04 02:14:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Haha -- Habeeb, if you could read you probably would have liked this.
Stagger, I rated you, hard, and in the mouth.
Submitted by ChristPuncher (user info) at 2007-07-04 02:13:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
bahahahahaha
jihad hoomin is facny elevator music
bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha
YER TASTES SUCK
GO CINDERELLA WOO!!!
Submitted by ChristPuncher (user info) at 2007-07-04 02:09:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
amon toobin????
FAG
JAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:50:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Read the end of the book.
Actually, it's been raining for about two weeks here and it just cleared up a day or two ago.
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:45:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
So Terry Pratchett would have me believe.
But it never rains, they say?
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:43:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The future is an amazing, exciting place, I'll have you know.
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:40:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Haha...
No.
It's boring in the future, isn't it Aussie?
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:35:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
SO....was it good?
Submitted by ih8u2man (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:24:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Vancouver WOOOOOT!
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:09:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Frankly, Stagger, given the choice I don't think I would either.
Damn poorly-placed comma in the seventh paragraph.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:06:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-07-04 01:05:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'd probably go to a concert with you. But probably not.