Two Fingers – Stunt Rhythms
Over a sixteen-year career, Brazil’s Amon Tobin has demonstrated an unerring creative instinct which, combined with his painstaking attention to detail, has earned him enduring respect among his peers. (He even managed, somehow, to pull off a triumphant live show at this year’s ill-fated Bloc festival). Stunt Rhythms revives Tobin’s hip-hop alias Two Fingers, and sees his restless adventurism take another new turn: muscular, razor-sharp electro riffs are dragged towards the heavier depths of contemporary bass music, particularly on tracks like Fools Rhythm and Sweden.
Elsewhere, this bruising quality is juxtaposed with a fleet-footed, dubby spaciousness (Magoo, Elmer Rhythm), which ensures that Stunt Rhythms maintains a sense of development and variety. In solely aesthetic terms, in fact, it’s tempting to characterise the record as a kind of electro-infused dubstep. What ultimately makes that description inadequate is the metallic, glossy texturing, which creates a kind of mutant, futuristic spawn of hip-hop.