Amon Tobin - Permutation (25Th Anniversary Reissue) Amon Tobin

Released: 31/05/24

The wildly talented Brazil-born, Brighton-raised producer Amon Tobin is lauded for many things “ as a member of the pioneering group of early Ninja Tune artists, including DJ Food and Coldcut, he showed just what was possible with a sampler if you have extremely good taste, a caustic sense of humour, and dazzling production skills; and he was one of the first electronic producers to compose the music for a computer game, namely the third iteration of the extremely popular Tom Clancy's Splinter Cellseries “ but for people of a certain generation, Tobin is perhaps best known for his links with the great English satirist Chris Morris. Where Adam Curtis found the perfect musical foil to his hauntological documentaries in Burial, for Morris, Tobin's hypnagogic collages were the perfect match for his darkly surreal comedy-horror radio series Blue Jam, such as the track Nova', from the 1998 album Permutation(now reissued to celebrate its 25th anniversary), featured in one of the great Blue Jam sketches about a woman who has trouble starting conversations' (sample excerpt: After we lost Diane I stayed in the house for about six weeks, then one day I just flipped and stormed out straight to the shopping centre and I knocked this bloke over the edge of the carpark, and he sort of landed on his head; he was very seriously injured). Such was their simpatico relationship that Morris returned the favour by giving Tobin permission to sample his Blue Jamin the 2000 track Bad Sex'. Anyway, Permutation, a heady mix of breakbeats, exotica, drum and bass, elastic sub, and choice samples “ notably more than a couple from David Lynch's go-to composer Angelo Badalamenti “ is remarkable, and, much like the work of Morris, still sounds as inventive and irreverent as it did over two decades ago.