With all the hype about Amon Tobin’s ISAM audio/visual mind-boggler, one thought the Paramount would be rammed to the rafters by the time opener TOKiMONSTA hit the stage. Not so. The LA beatmaker played to a sparse crowd, which in this expansive theater really must have sucked. Nevertheless, the Brainfeeder recording artist looked to be in good spirits as she delivered that sleek, SoCal hiphop ultra-modernism. But what was billed as a live set in the Decibel program seemed more like a DJ set (Pharoahe Monch’s “Simon Says”—albeit altered from its original—reared its ominous head at one point, as did a cover of Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love” and Max Romeo and the Upsetters’ “Chase the Devil”). What I really want to know, though, is what that track with the supersized guitar riff from Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” was—and who botched the spelling of TOKiMONSTA’s name on the huge screen behind her?

Next up, subbing for a reportedly ill Baths, Eskmo made us ponder whether dubstep producers who sing like emo-rockers is a good idea. In this case, conjoining these genres was ugly. His set was best when he let his nutty, oblong rhythms and unconventional percussion sounds (samples of opening soda cans, tearing paper, crack-addicts playing castanets, etc.) run along hypnotically, sans vocals. When he added demonstrative singing to the mix, things went sour. However, at one point Eskmo generated the most intense bass pressure I’ve ever felt, so respect for that.

The venue really started to fill up around 10:30, and the moment many had been waiting for began a bit before 11 pm: ISAM! The curtain dramatically opened on an odd-shaped, cube-intensive edifice, inside of which Amon Tobin worked the controls of his musical equipment.

From the start, the Brazilian producer generated a fucked-up Hollywood horror-thriller-soundtrack vibe, putting the fear of the Antichrist in you. It was kind of incredible that Tobin could pack out the Paramount with such dark, inaccessible sounds. Much of his set consisted of mushroom-trip-gone-awry aural madness and post-IDM sound design blown up to blockbuster production standards. There was one Residents-style warped pop tune (“Wooden Toy”) and one track that could presumably be danced to, but otherwise, this was mostly a soundtrack to writhe in your own sensory-overloaded dementia.

Of course, the audio had to go nuclear to compete with the visuals, which were vivid, surreal, and multi-dimensional. Constellations, old machinery, DNA strands, molecular models shattering and rearranging, white and blue smoke, myriad cityscapes, boxes upon boxes upon boxes, mysterious debris, lightning, fire, etc. flashed across the surface of the apparatus in retina-stunning succession. “Overwhelming” is inadequate to describe the extravagant surrealism. It was like being slammed in the eyes and ears by footlong, spiked dildos for over 80 minutes. I went into ISAM with a painful knot in my left trapezius muscle. When I left the Paramount, the pain had at least trebled. All that intensity sure tenses you up. The encore, though, deviated into the mellow, quasi-gamelan territory of "Night Swim," somewhat lessening the previous 70 minutes of shock and awe.

One got the sense that this show was history in the making—and the future of electronic-music performance. But what does it all mean? The biggest takeaway might have been: Ain’t technology grand? If you can discern any more nuanced meaning from ISAM than that, you were on better drugs than I was (I was straight and sober throughout—maybe a tactical error, in retrospect). Only DJ Shadow’s Shadowsphere really comes close to what Tobin and his conspirators are doing here. The scale is outrageously ambitious and escapist dazzlement is often its own reward.

Going to the Crocodile afterward to see Holy Fuck, I felt extreme pathos for that great Canadian band. The club was about half full and they were working with a piddling array of green and blue lights that scissored across the stage. Jesus, in this new post-ISAM world, everything else seemed anti-climactic and feeble—even the mighty Holy Fuck. But gradually their raw, rampaging, and Hawkwind-y cosmic dance rock gelled into something approaching precision chaos and grandiose discord, and it could be enjoyed for what it was. One just needed to recalibrate after ISAM. But it sure wasn’t easy.

The eight annual Decibel Festival kicked off for me with DJAO at HG Lodge—albeit after a 20-minute delay. The local producer/DJ (aka Alex Osuch, set up in the club’s back corner booth, accompanied by a flannel-shirted guitarist [grunge acknowledgment!]) made the wait worthwhile with a set that freshly integrated shoegaze, ambient, and future-bass elements. Using a keyboard hooked up to a big desktop computer and a microphone, DJAO generated an oneiric ooze (enhanced by lushly layering his own vocalized “ooh”s), which benefited from his guitarist Zuri Biringer’s Emeralds-like spangles. At times, the woozy, glassy tones coasted over stolid, earth-moving beats, forming a kind of hauntological hiphop. At others, DJAO crafted quasi-pop songs so warped that they turned into smeared mosaics of melody. Keep a close ear on this guy.

• Christa M
• DJAO @ HG Lodge's Dropping Gems Showcase

At Re-bar, Jon McMillion was in the process of loosing some low-slung tech-house noir. At first, it seemed as if the ravishing details of his recordings were not translating to the live arena, but gradually things came more into focus and McMillion’s subliminal dance tracks coalesced into some sublimely weird baby-making music.

Atom™ (aka Uwe Schmidt) came to the club looking dapper as fuck in a three-piece suit, black shirt, black tie, and slicked-back red hair. His severely Teutonic demeanor (all those years living in Chile didn’t exactly loosen him up, I guess—or maybe it’s all an act) contrasted with his understatedly madcap techno. Atom™’s tracks came festooned with squelches, twitches, and whimsical textures, which at times moved into the sort of IDM that flourished in the late ’90s, yet somehow it sounded un-retro.

On the two screens behind him, one exposed his control guidelines in green-on-black type, for maximal demystification of the music-making process; the other occasionally showed Schmidt at home or playing music, for maximal demystification of the personality behind the music-making process. Ever poker-faced, Atom™ would sometimes walk off the stage or simply stare stoically in the distance. “For a German guy, he sure has a British sense of humor,” cracked one local DJ. What wasn’t a joke were Atom™’s exacting, staccato funkiness and Perlon-esque way with minimal techno. Do the robot jitterbug…

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