ONLY CHILD TYRANT (Amon Tobin) Shares Video For “HoneyCup Troll” Featuring Live Band

If there is one thing that Amon Tobin should be known for, it’s for never being able to guess what he will do next. In his early life, the Brazilian-born producer and his mother relocated to Morocco, London, Amsterdam, and Portugal, before settling in Brighton, England, where he began producing sample-based electronic music. His very early work released under the moniker of Cujo by NINEBARecords was already providing a glimpse into the ominous soundscapes featuring jazz samples paired with drum-n-bass and jungle rhythms that he would perfect over his subsequent few releases for Ninja Tune. Across Bricolage [1997], Permutation [1998], and Supermodified [2000] there was a gradual progression of more industrial futuristic and otherworldly textures pushing to the forefront, as organic, jazzy elements like dusty horns and shambolic drum kits faded further into the background. While Supermodified was regarded as a sweet spot that offered a new level of accessibility in production, its follow-up, Out From Out Where [2002], likely shook a certain contingent of his fanbase, as things only became more and more aggressively mechanical. After relocating to Montreal, Out From Out Where was his first LP to be produced primarily in a professional studio and involved incredibly complex beats, shimmering waves of sound, and robotic-like hydraulics. Tobin wasn’t just embracing “futuristic” sounds, he was creating his own version of what that might mean. As cybernetic as things were getting, there was still life to them. The difference now is that the foliage blooming was not of terrestrial origin; he was harvesting and populating his own midnight dreamworld of buzzing metallic dragonflies, purple/magenta-hued flora, billowing iridescent steam, radioactive swamps, and thundering kaiju. It’s no surprise that, in recent years, he has formed a working relationship with artist, Andy Kehoe, known for painting his own brightly colored fantasy worlds. More than ever, Tobin was adventuring down a rabbit hole that he was both exploring and forging himself as he went along.

That first handful of records came in fairly quick succession, but with his evolving interests and approach to production came larger breaks between official Amon Tobin studio albums. In between Out From Out Where and Foley Room [2007], the producer created the soundtrack for Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos theory, offering a combination of gritty, starkly atmospheric soundscapes over pummeling, swirling, and frenetic beats that merged perfectly with a videogame built around creeping through shadows and espionage. One of the major impacts this project had on his work is that it marked him moving away from vinyl-based source material by recruiting a selection of international musicians to form a band and produce samples of his own. Inspired by the foley artists that create sounds for film, the initial idea behind Foley Room was to use nothing except field recordings and homemade samples (wasps in foil balloons, tiger roars, motorcycle engines, splashing water, etc) for the entire album. In fact, it was even partially recorded in Montreal at the Foley effects room for Ubisoft, who produced the Chaos Theory videogame. Ultimately, Tobin would bring in strings supplied by the legendary Kronos Quartet to fill out the albums, providing both depth and a level of eeriness to the compositions.

When ISAM (Invented Sounds Applied to Music) arrived in 2011, it was a multi-faceted project that not only involved much more intricacy in the layering of sounds, but also in the method of production, while incorporating a mind-blowingly elaborate live show. There are videos of Tobin sampling otherwise mundane objects like the twanging of a butterknife, only to modify the sounds into something completely unrecognizable. He would then employ a device known as a Haken Continuum, using the fingerboard to control and further mutate these samples through the newfangled hybrid synthesizer. He wasn’t just building from scratch, he was now creating the ingredients. He became so skilled with his technique that the seemingly “female” vocals on the album turned out to be coming from Amon himself. The live show saw him performing from a cock-pit of sorts within a massive geometric structure comprised of cubes. The structure operated as a backdrop for projection mapping technology utilized to create the illusion that it was shifting, disintegrating, and transforming throughout the show. He would live-trigger these visuals, interacting with them musically, in real-time. It was a tremendously ambitious endeavor the likes of which I’ve never seen before or after, so it’s understandable that the innovator might need some time to regroup before embarking on the next one. It would take 8 more years before we got our next Amon Tobin record, but since its arrival, we’ve been witnessing the most productive era in his entire career.

2019 was a busy year for Amon with the announcement of his own record label, NoMark, through which he would release Fear In A Handful Of Dust, the first full-length studio LP under his own name since ISAM. NoMark would soon offer a digital subscription service via Bandcamp that offers access to all of Tobin‘s work as it releases, confirming that plenty of new material was on the horizon. Along with his standard work and new music from Two Fingers, his bass-driven hip-hop focused collab with Doubleclick-turned-solo project, content from a wave of new side projects, collabs, and alter-egos began pouring in. The first of this new music to surface was in the form of an LP titled Time To Run under the pseudonym Only Child Tyrant. Tobin introduced the project by stating the following:

“I’ve often made my favorite things when I wasn’t overthinking things. This record came about over a period of time between things I may well have been overthinking. It’s fun to program drums that sound live and fake at the same time, to make synths sound like guitars and have guitars played by robots. My enjoyment of these processes became a complete sound with its own personality, one that needed its own name.”

The Bandcamp account for Only Child Tyrant describes the project in the following way:

“ONLY CHILD TYRANT is the punked up kid brother of Two Fingers.

He’s stroppy
He’s relentless.
He likes the number 6.

He’s been listening to his uncle’s collection of rock (from Beefheart and Zeppelin to Fugazi via Dick Dale and beyond) and stealing his brother’s 90’s mixtapes and it’s all gone to his head.

ONLY CHILD TYRANT is the Artful Dodger of Post-rock meets beats.”

 

Whether it be under his own name, Two Fingers, Figueroa, or, even more recently, as Stone Giants, this new formula utilizing Bandcamp alongside various aliases and his own label has allowed a hyperdetailed perfectionist like Amon to continue producing freely without overly concerning himself with focusing on the completion of one singular, highly intricate project. If he has a new thought or needs a break from anything he’s working on, there is always another direction to venture off into and explore that’s allowed to have a life of its own. Just as importantly, he’s able to share individual stray tracks whenever he feels compelled to.

Back in July, two new Only Child Tyrant tracks were released on Bandcamp only days apart from each other, each with similar artwork, indicating that they may, in some way, be connected to some larger project in the future (but, who knows?). The second of these tracks, “HoneyCup Troll,” appeared in a post on the Nomark site with the statement, “The perfect pop song is 3 minutes long and Only Child Tyrant pride themselves on dirty perfection.” and follows a more straightforward rock structure than we are used to from him, complete with lyrics and a little breakdown. Today, we get a brand new video for the song that features a quartet performing it with the standard drum/bass/guitar setup, giving it the full rock band treatment in the raucous fashion that it deserves. Shot in black and white, the video begins with a strobe light warning for any of you out there that may be at risk. The best part, of course, is the fact that each of the musicians is wearing a makeshift paper mask of Amon Tobin‘s face over their own.

Watch the video below and make sure to check out the Nomark website and/or follow the Amon Tobin and Nomark Bandcamp pages to stay in the loop.