Squarepusher: Feeding You Weird Things
Squarepushercreates music for people who can never sit still. Tom Jenkinson’s rubik’s fusion pseudonym has been creating glistening ambient and techno jazz since the mid-nineties. If you can name a dance music craze or phase, Squarepusher will have been standing around, picking all of the pieces apart and forging them into strange new shapes. No matter how flippant, po-faced, fast, dark, gleaming or grating, Jenkinson’s various projects have focused on finding new ways to make the same old sounds seem interesting. And now, he’s bringing a new project to the Barbican.
More so than any of the ‘bigger’ names in electronic music, the unique, acoustic side of Squarepusher blurs the lines between everything you thought you knew about bass. With his virtuoso playing abilities, it is common enough to find one of his projects switching seamlessly between smooth elevator jazz and gruff and grimey grindcore.
Those attempting to dive into the discography can expect to hear these bass playing talents, sounding like Charles Mingus getting lost inside a dial up modem or an acid house Entwhistle weather report run through a rain damaged tape deck. This understanding of the intricacies of the low end fuses his music with the kind of competence which makes his already daunting output all the more formidable for beginners.
Much like trying to shift through the various Aphex Twin schemes or trying to untangle everything Mike Paradinas assembled, getting a firm grip on the various strains of Squarepusher can be exhausting. Whether starting at the beginning or sticking to the standards; whether searching through the various drill and bass stabbings or easing in with some ambient noodling; working through the LPs, EPs, split projects, singles, soundclouds, CDRs, side projects and everything else is like trying pick apart the writhing tails of distant dance music’s relentless rat king. So, where to start?
Ultravisitor is the classic, featuring moments of shimmering beauty back ended by driving techno dabbles. Big Loada was his breakthrough breakcore record. My Red Hot Car was the closest he’s come to anything resembling chart success. Hello Everything beat the nearest thing he had to a formula over the anvil of pop. Ufabulum was his last real full length and Music for Robots was a strange side project in which, appropriately enough, he programmed musical robots.
With so many different options, sometimes it helps to just jump in at the deep end. Rather than sitting around having to endure endless adverts while churning through a pre-packaged Spotify playlist, getting yourself in front of a real set of speakers can be the right way to handle the introduction.
On the 18th of March, Squarepusher will be bringing his rave jazz rumbling to the Barbican. Without all the hassle of improperly tagged MP3s and tin-pot laptop speakers, you can let Tom Jenkinson bring you into his world of troubled troublemaking for the entire night. In a world where four to the floor means nothing, the best way to discover the sickening vitality of one of music’s most intricate innovators is to turn up, tune in and let Squarepusher feed you weird things.
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