Adventures in Foam

by Sean CooperAmon Tobin's impressive full-length debut for the London-based Ninebar label followed a series of head-turning 12" releases mixing drum'n'bass arrangements with obvious jazz, hip-hop, and Latin and Brazilian influences. Some of those early tracks make it onto Adventures in Foam, but the best of the album resides in glimpse-giving moments of genre-mingling such as "The Light" and "Northstar," which spin splintering breaks through shards of '70s fusion and '90s ambient and tech similar in eclecticism to Luke Vibert/Plug, Mung, and the less cheeky side of Squarepusher. The album was reissued by Shadow in 1997 on CD and in an abbreviated seven-track two-disc 10" vinyl edition.