A foley room is a place where sound effects are created for films. Foley artists use only their imagination and ingenuity to make the right noise for the right situation. These artists and their work served as inspiration for Amon Tobins new album. To create the foley style, Amon and his team of assistants headed out into the streets with high sensitivity microphones and recorded found sounds from tigers roaring to cats eating rats, from wasps to falling chickpeas, kitchen utensils to motorbikes to water dripping from a tap.

I think it’s justified to call it a concept album or a shift in compositional process. While Out From Out Where sounded from outer space and very sci-fci, Foley Room sounds much more organic while beeing out of this world, too. Tobin widened up the scope of his incredible sound and has created a melodic and musical sorcery. A genious mixture of samples that give his music a tremendous depth. Added with the sounds of musicians like the Kronos Quartet, Stefan Schneider and Sarah Page, this leads to “the pairing of sounds that share a sonic quality despite being otherwise unrelated” as stated by Amon Tobin.

The opener Bloodstone starts slowly, even mystical, building on subtle piano and string chords. Esher’s, the second track, enhances the piano with a monster of bass beats and a manipulated motorcycle engine, giving the melody a huge drive. Keep your distance is a typical Tobin moody track and as disturbing as some of his older ones. The Killer’s Vanilla-another great track with a superb outro. Foley Room includes the requisite scatter-breaks that are Tobin’s signature. The Big Furry Head track is another god example, with its roaring lions, melancolic strings, industrial textures and jungle sounds, all perfectly fitting together as an obvious thing you could never have thought of. As with all of Tobin’s records, the final tracks bring the listener down from the chaos that preceded.

Listening to the record is like walking through urban streets while opening oneself up to the sounds surrounding us. The groove of the dark and lighted world.

And as no one loves you like ninja: the package comes enhanced with a DVD, showing the recording an production process of The Foley Room.