Colours

Adam F gets jazz into drum & bass, and the breaks survive it on Colours. 'Circles' is the obvious proof, but the album keeps real playing and harmonic detail inside the pressure of the genre rather than floating above it. The polish gets close to smoothness and stops just in time. Few drum & bass records are this musical; that near-smoothness is the only thing costing it places.

Jazz fusion at 170 with a completely straight face. Circles put a bassline into the genre's permanent furniture, and the album around it is the rarest thing in this field: drum and bass that works as a varied, properly written long-player rather than a run of tools.