D/B/A: All of the Above

Changing lanes to explore the (many) (freaky) pre and post histories of Amon Tobin

Every now and then, the discography gods send a little present, some random-seeming nudge in the direction of a work that changes your understanding of an artist’s career, or a moment in music history.

A recent one of these came via Tidal’s Related Artists feature, which can be found below the Albums and Singles listings of many artists. I was on the Squarepusher page, just perusing the metric computational challenges there, and among those Tidal says is (algorithmically anyway) related to Squarepusher is Amon Tobin, the Brazilian electronic musician and composer.

Not having heard new music from Tobin in a bit, I clicked his photo and learned that the album frequently credited as his debut, the dizzying jump-cutting Bricolage (1997) was actually not his first effort. Surprise! The year before, under the moniker Cujo (Portuguese for “whose”), he put out Adventures in Foam on a small UK label. It was subsequently reissued, in expanded form, by Ninja Tune in 2002. Despite reviewing many of Tobin’s records, I missed Cujo entirely. Hearing it in 2025, nearly a 20-year tape delay, was surreal, a reminder about the richness that there yet somehow just out of reach in the big database. And of the discographical mischief created, possibly intentionally, by artists using multiple noms de art to share distinct aspects of their work.

1996 was a watershed year for creative electronic music – the Trainspotting soundtrack helped introduce the sonic revolutions of clubland to a mainstream audience, and there were powerful, inescapable records from Moby (Animal Rights), Fatboy Slim (Better Living Through Chemistry), DJ Shadow (Endroducing…), the debut of the shapeshifting Squarepusher (Feed Me Weird Things), Orbital (In Sides), drum-and-bass programming wizard LTJ Bukem (Logical Progression) and Robert Miles (Dreamland).

Adventures In Foam sounds less a part of that 1996 wave than you might expect: It jumps around stylistically, and unlike so many day-glo electronic records, its palette is muted colors and shadowy, moorish landscapes. It suggests that Tobin had different priorities than the above artists and others in the rapidly-evolving electronic music realm of 1996. What he brought, first as Cujo and later under his own name, was a sense of dramatic spacing and spaciousness, and a healthy disregard for genre distinctions. Some tracks could be tagged “ambient,” some align with “breakbeat,” some ping-pong between those extremes. “The Method” begins in a disquieting noir-jazz mood, like it’s last call in a sad old-man bar; as soon as he’s established the scene with a stock drum-machine “swing” rhythm, Tobim fades in a live drummer thrashing out a riled-up, almost completely unrelated groove, which co-exists but doesn’t sync with the first. It’s an artful and preposterous juxtaposition delivered with a David Lynch smile.

On Adventures in Foam (and really everything he’s done since), Tobin approaches composition and track-building as challenges of proportion, scale, density. Many programmers of the day pushed the subdividible snap of Roland electronic drum machines to extremes, filling every space with impossible runs and fills. On tunes like “A Vida,” Tobin goes more minimal: He sets up a clear pattern, then rather than do the typical (frantic) breakbeat sample chopping, he slides in shakers and woodblocks at strange polyrhythmic angles, adding tension without clutter.

At times on Cujo, Tobin conjures oddly minimal canvases, background spaces that invite daydreaming. “The Brazilianaire,” the track that’s been most often playlisted, starts with hiccupping percussion, and within seconds there’s a slurping bass riff and an idyllic reverby piano phrase that returns at semi-regular intervals. When combined, these elements pretty much say “welcome to our spa.” But the beat subtly rolls and shifts as the track evolves, becoming the kind of trance you could live in for awhile, until shortly after the 3-minute mark, the foundational loop expands to incorporate Tobin’s impressionistic take on the various metallic percussion instruments common in samba parades. It’s weird and groovy, a samba that’s locked to the grid but somehow feels free anyway.

Having missed Tobin’s first chapter, I dove into the other alter-egos that he shares alongside Amon Tobin releases on his Nomark Bandcamp page. Collect ‘em all!

There’s a film-soundtrack-ish alias, Stone Giants, specializing in hazy late-afternoon skygazing music:

He’s got an alt-rock project, the gloriously named Only Child Tyrant, he describes as “the Artful Dodger of Post-rock meets beats.”

There’s a heavy rock iteration, Two Fingers:

Figueroa:

Arguably most surprising is the rapt, pensive Figueroa, a solo excursion from 2020 described on the Bandcamp page this way: “The World As We Know It is an electronic album made in the absence of instruments. At the same time, it is a guitar/vocal album and entirely human. And so we have something of an anomaly.” Yes we do.