Four Ton Mantis is the second track off Amon Tobin’s album Supermodified.
Or at least, it was.
I had the track in an iTunes playlist and just happened to notice it being skipped over about a week ago. I didn’t think it was that weird at first because I hadn’t purchased the album; it was available to stream via Apple Music. Those streaming rights are always fluctuating based on unseen licenses and agreements, so I assumed that’s what was going on and I said to myself “You win iTunes, I’ll just buy the whole album”.
Except that track’s no longer on the album for purchase on iTunes either. That’s weird, right?
I know there are still restrictions with purchasing music digitally. You occasionally come across albums that had tracks that weren’t available as individual purchase; you had to buy the whole album to get certain songs. It was more common back when digital music sales were still new and scary but this isn’t that either. No mention of the song being available only as an album purchase, no track listing with a grayed out purchase button. The track is just completely gone from the full album listing for digital purchases on iTunes and Amazon. The album used to have 12 tracks, now they’re numbered 1 through 11.
I’m a resourceful guy, I know there are still ways to get this track. But has anyone ever seen this happen with other music? Where something you want to stream or buy legally is not just unavailable, but has vanished with no record that it was ever a part of an album?
Four Ton Mantis has been removed from the Spotify version of the album as well. Huh.
I mean, I assume it’s a sample clearance issue…it is still available in remixed form on the Bonobo remix album. Presumably the remix doesn’t contain the offending sample.
And no, I’ve never seen a song that totally disappeared before. I can’t find it on Youtube either.
Huh, didn’t think about that. How long before every early Beastie Boys album vanishes?
I don’t know the track but the case of the disappearing music was interesting enough I googled Four Ton Mantis gone and this thread is result #2. There seems to be no public answer yet.
This is strange I spent a few hours today trying to find the original music video to this track after I realized it was missing trying to show my dad Amon Tobin after he saw the lincoln car commercial on itunes. I know it was online last year because I showed my band mates the vid and song before our session. I realized that even on Amon’s soundcloud he does not have his version of the track and only the cover with bonobo. and the amazon store is only site that I could find where you can purchase that song.
I do have own a physical copy of supermodified and just surprised that the existence of this song can be erased from the internet so easily. I found a snippet of the vid searching the director and artist of the music video. I noticed some sites had a comment when trying to play this vid that it is banned from the usa. not sure if that means someone in canada or another country still have access to it.
If anyone has leads to the music video I think that would be good to find in regards to bookmarking and safe keeping for historical records sake.
Strange thing… you still can perfectly listen to it on Amon Tobin’s website… :-/
http://www.amontobin.com/discography-album&name=Supermodified+(Album)
You can still find the song on a russian website, that I’m not going to post here because it will then get deleted. But yeah, it’s gone from the known internet.
