.Live Review: Amon Tobin ‘Isam’ at the Warfield

Ever since Daft Punk’s giant pyramid, electronic acts have recognized the need for a sensory stage show—Justice and their wall of Marshall amps; Deadmau5 and his Rubik’s cube. These novelties have made live electronic music more visually interesting, and have helped sell more tickets, but they’ve so far been just that—novelties, meant to give the audience something to look at while somebody stands at a laptop computer.
Amon Tobin’s current tour Isam, on the other hand, is a true work of art.
Isam is Amon Tobin’s Metropolis, his Koyaanisqatsi. In a series of wordless images, the set that Tobin is bringing around to select cities makes a bold statement on technology and its omnipresence in our modern universe—terrifying one minute, beautiful the next. Like all great art, the production is thought-provoking, challenging and stunning. Submitting to it is pure glee.
So it’s like this: on the stage is a massive, unmoving sculpture of stacked white cubes. A projector fires laser images onto this sculpture, and there may some LEDs involved as well. The combined effect is a 3D experience where the cubes move even though they’re not moving; where the sculpture floats through space even though it is immobile; where a parallel universe exists with shape-shifting factories, angry jet engines and mechanized factory clangs competing with brilliant, serene patterns and transformative optical illusions.
In the center of all this, in a cube larger than the others, is Tobin, occasionally lit from within. These reveals—that there is, in fact, a human involved—pull the curtain back on a spectacle that’s seemingly created solely from silicon, and enshrine the production as a triumph not only of technological engineering but of cranial ingenuity.
And, lest this be taken for an exercise in intellectualism, there’s confetti, too.
There are several dates left of Tobin’s tour, and those who have a chance to see it should seize the opportunity. After the tour is over, the question arises: what will become of the 24-foot structure? The projected images, the gut-rumbling bass tones, the immersive presentation? Lost forever?
Without a doubt, Isam belongs in a museum.