Bricolage

For Brazilian-born and Brighton-based Amon Tobin, the entire history of recorded jazz is a library waiting to be sampled and reconstituted into splintered solos, splashy breakbeats, and melting melodic motifs. Tobin tosses fiery riffs, themes, and beats plucked from favourite bebop, "hot", and free jazz records into a cauldron of homebrew electronica, stirring in enough hip-hop, drum n' bass, techno, and pure sonic invention to bind the hash. If talent borrows, and genius steals, then Tobin is even a step beyond that. altro...

If the spicy Latin-ized drum n' bass of "Chomp Samba" and "One Day In My Garden" overcome you, blame it on the bossa nova. "Yasawas" bends poignant Hawaiian steel-guitar around slippery breakbeats, dissolving in and out of focus like a daydream. "Creatures", "One Small Step", "Dream Sequence", and "Bitter & Twisted" race by, condensed courses in jazz appreciation--Haden, Roach, Coleman, Mingus, Parker, Kirk--set to neck-wrenching rhythms. Slow and slinky, "The New York Editor" and "Stoney Street" saunter through the gas-lit, smoke-ringed world of '20s gangland-noir. BRICOLAGE exemplifies the Age of the Soundbyte, but Tobin isn't just peddling a flashy technological parlor-trick. His constructions are ambitious, his arrangements ingenious, and his music pulsates with heart and soul.

Option (9-10/97, p.122)
- "...benefits from hyper drum sequences, warped keyboard patterns and paranormal sound effects that will surely appeal to the club-hopping segment of his fan base. No doubt, this album is it for motion freaks..."