With its lush strings; its deep, snaking bass tremors; and its odd patches of percussive irritants, Amon Tobin"s latest album sounds at times like the kind of noir-ish drum & bass that Luke Vibert (a.k.a. Wagon Christ) has left behind. Such torch passing seems fitting since Permutation"s focus on jazz sample sources grew out of Tobin"s own career switch: dropping, if only for now, the Brazilian percussion and pop flavors that have long infused his home-brewed electronica. A languorous dollop of bossa nova closes this album, but otherwise it almost exclusively explores jazz: hard-bop drum solos, luscious horn lines, and mellifluous fusoid guitar. Tobin programs all this expressly analog material into his small battery of synthesizers and produces one of the strongest albums of 1998. --Marc Weidenbaum