Thanks to a mail-order mix-up mentioned in a previous thread, Ninja Tune were kind enough to send me a promo copy of the new Amon Tobin album, Foley Room. For quite some time I’ve considered Tobin to be one of the best artists around who construct music completely out of samples, but on this album he’s taken a slightly different approach. He still samples, but rather than using records as his source as in the past this time he uses field recordings of all sorts of things. There are animals, from lions to ants, also there are various machines, ranging from industrial equipment to toys, and all sorts of other things. On top of this he also recorded samples from musicians including the Kronos Quartet. All of this is not exactly groundbreaking, and in the accompanying documentary he admits as much, but it presented all sorts of new challenges and inspirations for him. The results are superb, the album fits in with his great back catalogue, but the new approach also has brought something fresh. It will be out in early March, in the meantime there is a single available as a download only from Bleep.