“Squarepusher is the fucking daddy!” Says it himself! And the big daddy of drill’n’bass is back, with a double album if you don’t mind, just over a year after the succulent Go Plastic. Still the only man to be able to pull a proper album of the stuff without repeating himself, Tom Jenkinson remains the uncontested heavy weight champion of a genre he single-handedly created, and which is usually referred to as sounding like “a drum kit falling down stairs” by the non initiated. Based on electro, hardcore, Hip-Hop, drum’n’bass, jazz, electronica and about anything in between, drill’n’bass is mayhem on record. Since he released his first album, Feed Me Weird Things on Rephlex some seven years ago, Jenkinson has proudly earned widespread recognition, being name-checked by about everybody who’s remotely cool in the industry, from Björk to Madge. It is the devotion of his fans that is most remarquable though, granting him a near iconic status, more worthy of a teenybopper’s dream boy band than of a man playing serious music. But that’s it: is Squarepusher’s music serious at all? Listening to any of his nine albums would through more confusion than it would bring answers. As the man responsible for the thing in the first place, he is free to take drill’n’bass wherever he wants, and fans would only ask for more. So, what’s so special about Squarepusher? What makes him so unique that the competition, Aphex and Venitian Snares en tête, are left light years behind? Althought he doesn’t take himself, or his music, seriously, his records are consistently brilliantly produced, and his sonic deconstructions are far more complex than meets the ear. Balancing his passion for the mechanical aspects of dance music and the freedom of jazz improvisation took him to experiment with live instrumentation on what still remains his best album to date, the astonishing Music Is Rotted One Note, released in 1998.
Jenkinson’s new opus, Do You Know Squarepusher, is in fact a mini album, towering at just over thirty minutes and seven tracks. If he has ventured at recording his voice in the past, Tom’s first proper song, the unforgettable My Hot Red Car, only appeared on Go Plastic. Here, he takes the mic again, discreetly at first, on the convulsive opening title track, then more prominently on the astonishing F-Train. The treatments applied on his voice make it difficult to follow the flow, but when furtively revealed, the text displays the same sharp-minded qualities as his music. Contrasting with the deluge of words –some would associate this with rap– the supporting soundscape evokes some of Autechre’s most abstract moments. The epic Mutilation Colony uncovers another sonic escape into utterly conceptual territories. Jenkinson flirts here with the experiments of the Musique Concrète movement and creates one of his most abstract sonic poems. Eroding the obscure tension of the blissful first part of the track by inserting threatening percussive dissonances in the second, he finally rejects the concept all together in the final thirty seconds of the piece. The first half of the album closes with a surprisingly reverential rendition of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, with a vocal contribution that would have Ian Curtis pass for a choir boy.
The second disc compiles ten tracks, recorded in July 2001 in Japan. Simply entitled Alive In Japan, this collection offers a brilliant insight into Jenkinson’s live persona. If anyone doubts the practicality of his music in a live environment, one listen should be enough to restore their faith in the man. Most of the tracks presented here were part of Go Plastic in some shape or form, the album focusing on the sheer energy of the music. My Red Hot Car, Go! Spastic and My Fucking Sound prove to be some of the highlight of this album, together with the fired up version of Do You Know Squarepusher, the track, stilling the show.
Do you think you know Squarepusher? Well, think again. If Alive In Japan shows Tom Jenkinson getting all frisky with his chaotic beats, Do You Know Squarepusher is him methodically discarding almost every aspect of Squarepusher-ness, only to reconstruct his sonic landscapes in grander and stronger fashion, asserting his position as smartest noise terrorist.

5/5