Bleep

Celebrating its 25th Anniversary, Brazilian mastermind Amon Tobin’s Permutation on Ninja Tune saw the producer take an introspective turn. Darker but no less rhythmically stunning, Permutation elevates the sampler from tool to instrument, creating worlds of sound from stacks of vinyl and a multitude of genres, from jazz to Bollywood, from Brazilian rhythms to hip hop. The album contains a number of references to David Lynch’s films, with titles such as ‘Like Regular Chickens’ or ‘People Like Frank’ quoting dialogue from Blue Velvet and Eraserhead, and ‘Escape’ containing a vocal sample of the director himself. The Lynchian state in between dream and reality perfectly matches Tobin’s confounding sound aesthetic. Again and again, he probes into the previously unknown: loungy piano jazz has never before sounded so brilliantly unsettling.