Customer Reviews

Bricolage

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you've perchance stumbled across this page and haven't heard this CD, its actually much more of an improvement for the world than sliced bread.....

Amon Tobin and his Ninja Tune labelmates have reinvigorated not just the electronic scence/sound, but are pushing ahead jazz-- which is a move that no one would think could happen. Tobin samples from among the widest spectrum of sources that any compositional artist has, and then combines this with occasionally pounding but occasionally subtle backbeats that results in a music that is both human and non-human, live and contrived....

Just do yourself a favor and buy this CD-- and all of his others (including Adventures in Foam-- recorded under the name Cujo). Honestly, I wonder if anyone has ever listened to Tobin and not thought him brilliant?

Rarely does an album come along that breaks new boundries and pushes the envelope. The first time I heard this album I was for lack of a better word I was speachless. Truely beatiful textures and tones are only complimented by the hard breaks and inovative drum work. In reading some interviews I learned that all this album was made with Qbase on an old mac and a sampler. The planing and time this must of took blows my mind. So many time in the recently developed and some what pretensious DJ scene, one must listen to album after album to find any thing original and fresh. I was quite inspired to hear Amon Tobins album. Bricolage is evedince that music will still continue to evolve and progress as an artform. The technology and talent equation sometime is often subtracted by hype and divided by ego. I am glad to see that a few individuals are still able to equate technology+talent to = music.

Who said that electronic sampled music couldn't have soul? I suppose I should describe how I got hooked onto Amon Tobin's work. Oddly enough, I listened to the Amon Tobin collection in reverse (Supermodified, Permutation, Adventures In Foam, Bricolage, respectively) While Bricolage doesnt quite match the mixing and production of Supermodified, the hybrid flowing rhythm and layered beats are just unparalleled.

Jazz, Rock, Electronic, Dance, Jungle, Ambient. It's honestly way too many influences to be classifiable and that's a tribute to Tobin's unique style. Music at its best.

Some people may brand him as electronic, but I have to thoroughly disagree. Have you ever wondered what it was like to watch a movie completely visualized in your head by means of musical influence? This, and most other works by him will do the trick. There are so many sounds and emotions going on that you can picture a scene for every song. It's not just a composition, its a visualization. The intensity levels can peak to a point you wouldn't think could be reached by music. The way he explodes the combinations into a structurally accurate form amazes me. He fuses Jazz with Drum and Bass with Ambience with Jungle with just plain creepy noises, and it feels as though you are somewhere. Being a musician, I have a deep respect for music that takes you somewhere just through your ear drums. This does the trick. This creation in particular has a lot of creepy, desolate, isolated sounds pouring through your speakers while at the same time exploding with some form of insane serenity. You can't classify this guy, he is all over the place. If you are for anything vocal, he is not for you. BUT, if you are into instrumentals, much like I am, and ORIGINAL sounding instrumentals, this is perfect. The spectrum of music is displayed within this work of art. It's not just music, its art. Its a display of what you can do musically if you really sit down and THINK about it. Listening to it leaves me speechless. It's truly a vacation in musical format, and I highly reccomend it. If you don't at least ive it a shot, I think you are missing out on a potentially epic piece of art.

As someone who craves vocal-free electronica,
I'm so glad to have finally discovered the works of
Amon Tobin. So far I've heard Supermodied, Permutation
and Bricolage. All three of these CDs are different in style,
all three are excellent and all three are vocal free!
What a great discovery for me! Supermodied is the most
stark and science-fiction/ambient; Permutation is the most
jazzy; and Bricolage is the most melodic and worldly.
Since no track programming is needed, I like putting all three
CDs in the machine at once, on "random play," then all three
CDs compliment one another extremely well. Hmmmm guess I'll have
to try the "live" CD next!

Definitley my favortite Amon Tobin record of all time. There's just something completely unique about it that sets it apart from the rest of his work. And I know that every album of his is a little different from the next, but this one seems to grip me more each time I listen to it.

I love this guy, but I find his later work kind of fatiguing. His music is so brilliant and amazing that sometimes I have a bit of trouble taking it all the way through (laughs). I found his debut, Bricolage, fantastic. While it may not be as brilliant in other senses, this is the best form of the drum and bass sound. It doesn't have the mindless repitition of it, but still has those rhythms that I love about D and B. He does go to other beats as well to, but a lot of chaotic drums are intact that go like ________ peanut butter and jelly over everything else. On top of that, when you add Tobin's still great use of, uh, everything else he sticks on top of the rhythms, this is why Bricolage is so great when I give it a whirl.

Song wise? Wow, where to start. Stoney Street features jazzy rhythms and samples, and you can just visualize a dark city, or maybe a light city, or maybe a city through the eyes of a drunk. Easy Muffin has brilliantly soothing electronic warmth that reminds me of Autechre (like Amber), and of course, the drums. Yasawas starts with single chimes, and builds with a throbbing bassline, cool textures, and looping breakbeats vs. Drum and Bass. Creatures is another delicious drum groove with ether sounds and creepy noises. A great ode to the creatures of the night. Chomp Samba is a drum and bass tour de force. There's a groove of jungle dense drums right after thumps of percussion, and it fills with dark, dark, dark ambiance.

The New York Editor impresses with a unexplainable pulse of a beat, a jazzy shuffle. I won't get started on why Defocus is bad@$$, but take the title of the song into context. Bitter and Twisted? Wires and Snakes? Listen to those tracks and their drums. One Day In My Garden, with it's light brazillian rhythm, evolves into more of the drum and bass mayhem, and once again brings you out on a breezy note. Dream Sequence is very abstract goodness, and One Small Step is the best drum and bass song ever. Finally, we get Mission, that takes the whole thing down (and I swear that I hear the flute from Sequent C from Phaedra).

So even with Permutation and Supermodified, this album stands out on it's own. Reccomended. Like, now. I would say this album is a drum and bass tour de force. That alone is enough.

10/10

After a brilliant, overlooked album under the Cujo moniker, Amon Tobin switched to Ninja Tune and released the debut album under his own name. It is a masterpiece. I could say much more, but this album is one of the best electronica albums ever created. How it doesn't get its dues as being better than anything supposed masters Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada or Autechre have done is beyond me. I would rank this album right up there with DJ Shadow's seminal "Endtroducing.....", not least of all because the two have a similar sound. This album is earthy, and different from Tobin's future releases in that he takes relatively few samples which are longer in duration that ones he would employ later. Thus you have the cool jazz of "Stoney Street", the headcrushing bass of "Mission", and a musical journey unlike any other in between. Perhaps the best testament to this album's greatness is that eight years after its release, it still sounds startlingly new and ahead of its times. He would go on to do bigger and better things, but here is Amon's genesis as one of the greatest modern composers of our time.

I was in a coffee house a while back listening to all this mind blowing music in the background. There were so many variations from one tune to the next. One song was like a haunted, latin drum and bass carnival (chomp samba, my fav)while another tune was so smooth and minimal. I finally had to ask the the guy behind the counter if he was playing a compilation from his personal collection. When he told me it was Amon Tobin I had to get it. I took this cd on a road trip and played it practically nonstop while driving. It was excellent! There are so many styles and influences - all relative on one cd by one artist. Jazz, acid jazz, bossa nova, drum n' bass. This guy is talented. #14 (mission) has got to be one of the most innovative tunes I have heard in a long time (hideouskinky!). Check it out.

Bricolage molds together great samples of old jazz records and drums in interesting ways to make a sort of electronic/jazz fusion. The first song is a great one for the opening, it gets right into his unique style, lots of subtle drum programming and subsonic bass with a sparse melodic line. Songs also get into the drum and bass realm often, and sometimes into brazilian and latin flavors. I find this album hard to listen to though, after 5 tracks it starts becoming a bit more of a chore than a pleasure to listen to it, most likely due to the very repetetive feel. The songs sound pretty different but it's all got a very...Amon feel to it. Some people will probably dig on that more than I though.