Cujo

Recording as Cujo for London's Ninebar label, drum'n'bass deviant Amon Tobin fuses hip-hop and jazz compositional ideas with the bustling rhythms of hip-hop and jungle and the bent sonic mayhem of ambient and dub. Unlike rolling junglists such as Alex Reece and Wax Doctor, however, who draw from a softer, "cooler" brand of jazz, Tobin aims to maintain the heat of bop and free, pairing spry, galloping basslines with complex trapset orchestration and shrill, screaming horns. A native of Brazil, Tobin moved to the U.K. in the mid-'80s, when hip-hop was beginning to take hold and the rhythms of breakbeat electro-funk were replacing reggae and punk as the underground youth music of choice. Currently residing in Brighton, Tobin didn't begin seriously making music until college, but his passion for the sampler, as well as the support and encouragement of no less of breakbeat scientists than Ninebar and Ninja Tune immediately convinced him to forgo a university career to focus on music (he was a few years into a photography degree when he put the whole project on hold). He's since released a trio of EPs (a pair for Ninebar, as well as the Creatures EP for Ninja Tune) and as many full-lengths (Adventures in Foam as Cujo, plus Bricolage and Permutation as Amon Tobin).