AMON TOBIN
Interview by Lud Dub
Tell us about your motive behind the Foley Room Live in Brussels mix?
For a while we were gonna do a second edition of the Solid Steel mix, which I had done in Melbourne a few years back. I made a decision that instead of doing a studio mix I wanted to try to catch a part of the atmosphere that was during a really good night. Solid Steel part 1 went real well. So in this last tour, the Foley Room tour, we happened to be doing a show at the Ancienne Belgique, which is probably one of the top sound systems in Europe. The crowd was awesome, and it just was a good place to do a recording, as they are very well set up for that. It could have been anywhere really, it was an amazing tour, the reception everywhere.
What was your approach to making music for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory? How did you prepare for it?
It was a real technical thing. When you make music for a game, the music has to adapt to the game, depending on how it is going. So the music had to be flexible, based on the level and intensity that the player was experiencing. The music would adapt hopefully quite seamlessly. So there were a lot of technical challenges involved in doing that. Making a track and it splitting into four different stress levels. Each level had to work independently of one another and had to switch at any time and add a layer to any of the other three and multiple combinations as well. Musically, I was limited in lots of ways to what I could do, as I couldn’t have a melody that, for instance, went over too many bars, that would have to be cut in half, if there was another level of intensity introduced into the game. It really helped me in terms of discipline in producing something with a specific goal as opposed to making music the way I normally do, the way I still do now actually. It was a good exercise for me. It was intense, I had to deliver a track every week. I played games a lot on tours, in the back of the bus. That taught me a lot.
