Big agree on Amon Tobin, he's ace in pretty much everything he does.
I'd recommend the album Bricolage for more of a jazzy, upright bass powered album. Not groundbreaking rhythms or anything, but interesting enough to keep you listening to all the detail he puts into it.
Supermodified is amazing also, not as jazzy as his earlier stuff, a little darker, more melancholy if you ask me. The track Slowly may be my favorite track by Amon Tobin, it still surprises me after listening to it multiple times.
Bonobo is a lot like Amon Tobin. Same label, "Ninjatune."
His music is a little more laidback than Amon Tobins, and a little simpler. Not quite as intricate as Amon Tobin, but he's got great beats, and very jazzy samples. Animal Magic is by far one of the best trip hop/electronic albums I've ever heard. It's almost completely instrumental save for a few sampled vocals. It's all very tasteful and very well thought out. I can't really recommend one song from the album, because they're all very high quality, but listen to Kota. You'll be addicted by the simple, slightly sad guitar sample. The rhythm of this one is the coolest of the album. The guitar part may trick you at first, which is part of what makes it cool. be sure to tell me if you can feel the effect I'm talking about when the drums come in.
DJ Food is a little bit of a mix between Bonbobo and the next band I'll talk about. Take a listen to the song "The Crow." It's an interesting piece that really highlights the percussion instruments of the song. Great vibraphone part, and a drum beat that just draws you in. Later in a long the song are some drum fills that just blew me away when I listened to them. It's not too technical, but a very creative way of presenting the drums when not being played by a human.
Flanger and Wibutee are two fantastic bands that join jazz and electronic in a very fine way. Not "nu-jazz" per se, but more like jazz with some effects. A very unique and interesting listen. Spirituals by Flanger is an awesome album if you like jazzy sounding stuff. Nuclear jazz is much more electronic, and experimental sounding of an album. Definitely not as smooth and poppy as Spirituals.
Sweet Mentals and Eight Domestic Challenges by Wibutee are a lot more electronic and experimental sounding than most Flanger stuff, but it's still good.
If you're looking for some ambient stuff, I highly recommend susumu Yokota. I used to absolutely hate ambient music, but Susumu Yokota showed me that there can be good ambient also.
Far from the synthesizer overrun, reverb loving music that I think about when I think ambient, Susumu Yokota totally redefined ambient music for me. First I would recommend "The Boy And The Tree," It's an extremely well produced album of mostly ambient work by Susumu, using worldly sounds and a pretty simplistic sound. best song off the album by far: "Grass, Tree and Stone."
"Grinning Cat" is another excellent album from him. It's focused on samples and you can tell he uses samples very clearly on this one. It's not as "refined" as The Boy and The Tree, but that's not a bad thing, it's very raw, and still a fantastic listen. Check out Balloon In The Cage for an idea of what this album sounds like. Flying Cat is more rhythmical if that's what you're looking for, an interesting listen. I'd also recommend Card Nation from that album as a basic idea of what the album is like. It's very piano driven and very drum driven.
"Symbol" is one of the first I listened to by Susumu. It's full of standard classical samples, almost like a long mash up of classical music. It's all done very well, and just as good if you aren't listening for the pieces he's using.
Next, I would like to introduce you to Monk & Canatella.They're a band from the trip-hop period, but less hip hoppy and more experimental. I'd recommend the whole album "Care in the Community" if you can find it. I'd say it's one of the more obscure artists on this list. Like DJ Food, they use some very interesting drum beats that sort of make you rethink the way you play. Due to not being held back by human playing, they came up with some very creative ways to use percussion, which is one of my favorite reasons to listen to the genre.
The last recommendation I have for you now is the Dust Brothers. They scored the soundtrack for fight club. They've produced albums for beck, the beasties boys, etc. I think they did the most recent album by They Might Be Giants. anywho, give the fight club soundtrack a little more attention next time you watch the movie. It really pops out as a clasic in the film sound world.
Give me your thoughts if you take any of these recommendations! I hope you had the patience to read through all this!
Edit: Wow, sorry about that long post! I didn't realize I had been writing so long!
