 Over the next several years, Tobin released three albums. Bricolage, released in 1997, was the culmination of two projects Tobin had started after his debut album earlier that year. His third album Permutation was released in 1998. Independent radio stations aired Tobin's pieces during the summer of 1998 to positive listener reaction from conventional jazz aficionados, who identified with the computer-generated drums and composition. In the late 1990s, sample-based music was becoming more popular with a wide range of emerging and developing genres, but Tobin himself was still largely unknown. Tobin's style of music was not seen as definitively belonging to one genre or another. The critics that commented on Bricolage and Permutation gave them positive reviews and they are often mentioned, by later reviewers and interviewers, as classic albums of the time. Pitchfork Media acclaimed the use of jazz instrument samples, comparing him to famous composers Quincy Jones and Miles Davis. In a 1999 review, they awarded Bricolage a very rare 10 / 10 and said that it was "one of the most inventive records of the decade."
