Amon Tobin | |
---|---|
Tobin performing live in Luxembourg City
|
|
Background information | |
Birth name | Amon Adonai Santos de Araújo Tobin |
Also known as | Cujo |
Born |
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
February 7, 1972
Genres | Electronica, trip hop, breakbeat, IDM, house, nu jazz, drum and bass |
Occupation(s) | DJ, record producer, musician |
Instruments | Synthesizers, keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, saxophone, theremin, chapman stick, drum machine, sampler |
Years active | 1995–present |
Labels |
Ninja Tune Ninebar |
Associated acts | Two Fingers, Eskamon |
Website | AmonTobin |
Amon Adonai Santos de Araújo Tobin (born February 7, 1972), known as Amon Tobin, is a Brazilian musician, composer and producer of electronic music. He is described as a virtuoso sound designer and is considered to be one of the most influential electronic music artists in the world. He is noted for his unusual methodology in sound design and music production. He has released seven major studio albums under the London-based Ninja Tune record label.
In 2007 he released Foley Room, an album based entirely on the manipulation of field recordings. His latest album, 2011's ISAM, included "female" vocals made from his own processed voice. His music has been used in numerous major motion pictures including The Italian Job and 21. Tobin has created songs for several independent films, including the 2006 Hungarian film Taxidermia, and had his music used in other independent films such as the 2002 Cannes Palme d'Or nominated Divine Intervention. A selection of his tracks were featured in commercial bumps on Toonami and in the 2005 anime IGPX, and he produced the musical scores to critically acclaimed video games Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory by Ubisoft in 2005, and Sucker Punch's Infamous in 2009.
Tobin was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At the age of 2, he and his family left Brazil to live in Morocco, the Netherlands, London, Portugal and Madeira. Tobin settled in Brighton, England as a teenager which remained his permanent residence until 2002. There he began producing electronic music in his bedroom with samplers and other audio equipment such as an Amstrad Studio 100 4-track, although he was "not really involved in the [music] scene" at that time. While taking an editorial photography class at a university in Brighton, he responded to a magazine promotion for the London-based Ninebar record label asking artists to send in demos of their songs. Ninebar signed Tobin to the label in 1996 after hearing his early work, and he traveled between his home in Brighton and the studios in London to produce his first official works. He also spent some time living in Montreal before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008.