Amon Tobin

Judging from Amon Tobin’s previous collaborations, I was expecting giant anthropomorphosed insects, gore and cyborgs. there wasn't any of that - we got something stranger and more exciting.

For a while before the show started, a selection of eery cinematic music played over the PA, with surprise horror-stabs sharply punctuating the buzz of expectation as everyone in the packed venue jostled for a good position. With anticipation built sufficiently, the Forum’s stage curtains were at last pulled back to reveal… a pile of white boxes. Like a Blue Peter model of an MC Escher drawing. The initial anti-climax was dispelled as soon as the stage projections started up, though - and a double whammy of eye-popping visuals and sonic ass-whipping began.

Lights and surging white clouds of smoke projected onto the structure quickly complicated to turn the complex surfaces into a 3D illusion - as if the cubes contained the lights and smoke - until the structure suddenly became the side of a gigantic space battle-cruiser under attack. The barrage of shifting imagery was so intense and engrossing throughout that the music, as good as it was, became an accompaniment to the visuals - a reversal of sensory-focus I've never experienced at a gig before. Later on, unfeasibly complex machines were constructed, constellations of stars were manipulated to the music’s all-encompassing sub-bass pulse, alien planets were explored. Some of the effects were more expressionistic and abstract - tracks like ‘Slowly’, which got an ecstatic response, featured embers and oscillating geometric shapes.

So that the mechanization didn’t distance the audience too much, the central, larger cube in the structure occasionally cleared to reveal Tobin at work - at another point, Amon’s own form was projected onto the cubes to show him conducting his music live - the movement in his fingers and arms creating neon orange ripples that filled the stage and mutated the landscape behind. To top it all off, Tobin closed the show with some fantastic future-hip-hop bangers so everyone had the chance to dance as well as getting their minds blown. It was the most awe-inspiring symbiotic mix of sound and visuals of any concert I’ve been to - I think most of the crowd must have stepped out into the night only half-believing what they'd seen.