Stone Giants: West Coast Love Stories Album Review

Stone Giants
West Coast Love Stories
Nomark

Link: Bandcamp

There are so many directions this album could go. Amon Tobin imported his perspective of life into his soundscape palette and a new alias for the electronic musician. As his career moves through ideas and perspectives, Stone Giants is a deep dive into Tobin’s mind as he navigates the philosophical approach and twisted emotional current of the ideas of love. How do we feel about it as a cultural identity? What’s the personal motive? How do these songs make you feel about it all?

The identity melting of man and machine, Tobin is conscious of the framework that pushes forward this emotional drive. From an outward perspective, “Stinson Beach” is a memory converted to sound. You feel its dimensional layers of aural illusion which is why the composition plays tricks on you. Does it stem from the hallucinatory aesthetics of the sun and water fusing together in a sensory perception or is it the delusion that the farther we drift, the more convoluted that memory becomes no matter how hard we reach out for it.

In all of its abrupt strangeness, “Dad’s Big Camping Trip” falls along an angular line of electronic bumps and bruises that are more tongue-in-cheek than the hollow feeling we get on something like “Metropole.” Maybe because of the latter, the machine feels like it is winning. Yet, the agenda of “Metropole” feels deeply personal.

“Being exposed feels important when love stories are involved,” says Tobin. “After all, we need to risk making fools of ourselves if we’re to connect in any meaningful way.”

West Coast Love Stories is a piece of intricate and important sound designs, and Stone Giants is the part of a bigger picture. Yet, confined to its own introverted approach, Tobin reveals some of the most contemplative perceptions through music that I have heard in a long time. His art allows you to think about it long after the presentation.

Stone Giants – Metropole

Tracklist:

1. West Coast Love Stories
2. Metropole
3. A Year To The Day
4. Best Be Sure (Feat. Figueroa)
5. A Well Run Road
6. Stinson Beach
7. Fairweather
8. The Girl With The Great Ideas (That I Steal)
9. Dad’s Big Camping Trip
10. All Of The Pillows