Aural Aggravation

Nomark

James Wells

Stone Giants is Amon Tobin’s new musical vehicle, and marks yet another chapter in the versatile and eclectic electronic innovator’s quarter-century spanning career that’s seen his music feature in films and video games.

‘Metropole’, the second release from forthcoming album West Coast Love Stories, is a bewildering work, with so much happening simultaneously, to the extent that it feels like several different tunes overlaid. A steady, pulsing synth remains a constant throughout, as layers of droning organs, reverbed vocals, yawning synth washes and a meandering baritone melody that’s seemingly wandered in from another track and ambulates around.

The effect is disorientating, but not unpleasant: the confluence of the numerous contrasting and superficially discrepant elements is not so disparate and difficult so as too induce tension or cerebral disharmony, nothing of the gut-lurching bewilderment of something like, say, Trout Mask Replica. More, it draws the listener in to explore the ways in which the different pieces fit together, the ways each layer of this sonic palimpsest ebb and flow and reverberate off one another at varying frequencies.

AA