Amon Tobin’s relationship with sampling changed dramatically over time.
His earlier work often began with fragments taken from existing records. By Foley Room, he had moved toward recording his own material, gathering sounds from environments that included animals, machines and factories. With ISAM in 2011, he pushed that process further. Field recordings became raw material for synthesis, and those transformed sounds were built into playable instruments from which the music could then be composed.
That distinction is important.
Sampling usually begins with the identity of a recorded sound.
A door closes.
A bee buzzes.
A machine rattles.
Process the recording far enough and that identity can disappear. What remains may be only a grain, envelope, texture or spectral character.
At that point the recording stops behaving like documentation.
It becomes synthesis material.
I find this more interesting than the endless argument about whether a synthesizer sounds “realistic.” Tobin’s method travels in the opposite direction.
Start with reality.
Destroy enough information that it becomes something imaginary.
Then make the imaginary sound playable again.
A microphone can therefore be the first oscillator in a synthesizer that has not yet been built.
