It’s been a while since I’ve listened to an album that uses an insane amount of sampling and Foley recordings to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of music. Hailing from Melbourne, Spoonbill returns with his third album, Zoomorphic.

The last time I heard a great sampled and Foley recording was *Amon Tobin*’s Foley Room back in 2007 which had some absolute corkers, but it had its fair share of ho-hum weird too. Zoomorphic sounds as though it’s following that formula. The first half of the album being the weaker of the bunch but as it progresses the album becomes a fantastic, slick listen.

With the kicking of the speakers on the opener, Woodenspoon. We’re treated to a left and right sonic mind screw. As the drum kicks thump our heads and the electro burps and wonk stir our bodies around.
The next three tracks, Bunkerfunk, Sunny Side Up and Wonkball are all similar in the vein of Woodenspoon, playful, but gritty and absolutely weird.

Then comes the rest of the album, which begins to become really interesting. The track Friardel lays down a massive bass lead and a nice NYPD cop theme and vibe to it. It’s got great little grooves to it that amp up the bass and power mid-track and add more squeals and sirens and filtered synths. Next up is Feather Leather which sprinkles trumpets over a wonky, swirly electro-y lead and a fun little trumpet breakdown with some bubbly, grimy synths. This one is the real groover. Another top track is Mangle Boogie Bangle, an out of time sounding, glitched up, wall destroying breaks number. It’s got a fantastic amount of energy with the beat, glitches and bass all coming into time and forming an energetic piece to compliment some of the slower Trip-hop, Dubstep tracks on the album.

Zoomorphic starts off a bit shaky, with its opening tracks having stark similarities to one another. However, when you give the album your time, it turns out to be a very abstract and unique journey through some fantastically sampled and structured tunes. It’s still going to take some time for any artist to master structuring Foley recorded sounds, but Spoonbill certainly is leading the charge with the release of this album; taking a page from Amon Tobin’s Foley recordings and sampling and one-upping it. It makes one extremely proud to have heard an Aussie artist who’s pushing his sound similar to the heavyweights overseas.