Jenny Charlesworth

Jenny Charlesworth is an arts and culture journalist and online editor at Today's Parent. She regularly contributes to The Straight, Concrete Skateboarding and The Grid. A music and pop culture enthusiast, Jenny has written for The Wire, The Globe and Mail, Spinner, Paste Magazine, Montecristo Magazine, The Block, HUCK Magazine and The Tyee. She lends her expertise to CTV National News. In 2010, Jenny was a member of the Polaris Music Prize Grand Jury.

Ground control to Amon Tobin

_PHOTOGRAPH BY EDWARD CARREON

For the better part of two decades, electronic music maven Amon Tobin has dazzled audiences with mind-expanding cuts that marry vinyl samples with his uncanny sonic sensibility. Despite his  impressive résumé, the Brazilian-born visionary balked at touring his new album ISAM. Tobin insisted this latest disc—which he calls a “sound sculpture” of field recordings—didn’t have the right vibe to ignite the dance floor, so the stage show needed to evolve beyond his DJ-centric performances. When ISAM: Live touches down in Toronto on Sunday night, fans will experience an audio-visual adventure that has already drawn praise from Cirque du Soleil. Tobin gives us the inside scoop on his bold new show.

1. “I can’t make the music from ISAM work in a DJ environment because it’s not about making people come to the front of the dance floor, so I had to think differently about how to present it,” says Tobin. “We came up with an idea about integrating it into a much larger thing; making [something other than] myself the visual focus.”

2. “I’m not DJing, so it’s more like a cinema experience, a live presentation of the record with visuals. Similarly to when I do DJ sets, I’ve really meticulously worked out the pacing and dynamic curve to the live show,” says Tobin, who utilizes audio-reactive graphics and real-time projection mapping created by Vello Virkhaus of V Squared Labs—which animates stationary objects with 3-D video—to bring ISAM to life.

3. “It’s not just a series of random visuals that look pretty; there’s a narrative to the whole thing. I had this adolescent fantasy about having a spaceship, and I thought it would be a great idea to use this technology to realize that. We have this whole part of the story where the spaceship gets hit by a meteorite and it causes some damage to the engine room. It goes from a very wide shot of the ship and space and zooms into the engine room.”

4. “Where I am, it’s very much a cockpit. I’m surrounded by screens and controllers and all kinds of technology that makes me feel like I’m off flyingon some mission.”

5. “Before people actually see the show, I think they tend to draw comparisons with other large-scale productions like Daft Punk or Deadmau5, but after seeing the show I think they really realize that it’s actually a totally different thing. This is something new.”

-Published in The Grid Oct. 19

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