SQUAREPUSHER
Ufabulum
WARP228
Warp Records 2012
10 Tracks. 51mins20secs

Amazon UK: CD | CD LTD | LP US: CD | CD LTD | LP Boomkat: CD | CD LTD | LP iTunes: DLD

In the sixteen years that separate Squarepusher’s debut to his latest delivery, Tom Jenkinson’s music has mostly been fueled by strong fusion jazz currents and massive rave effusions, but whilst these two poles have cohabited, his albums have for the most part been under the dominance of one or the other, never quite the two in equal measures. With its heavy synths lines and playful keyboard washes, Ufabulum clearly belongs to the latter category. Following an excursion as lead-member of Shobaleader One, an enigmatic formation which delivered the somehow crowd-divisive d’Demonstrator two years ago, Jenkinson is back as Squarepusher, and it would appear that his little escapade has done him a world of good.

After the acoustic tendencies of Hello Everything (2006), which eventually led to the entirely beat-less Solo Electric Bass 1 in 2009, Ufabulum is Jenkinson’s most overtly electronic record to date. Continue Reading »

SQUAREPUSHER
Squarepusher Presents Shobaleader One: d’Demonstrator
WARP196
Warp Records 2010
09 Tracks. 44mins40secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Do you know Squarepusher? This is what Tom Jenkinson was cheekily asking almost ten years ago, and he’s since regularly deflected preconceptions on his work, which resulted most spectacularly last year with the release of the superb Solo Electric Bass 1 album, which, as its title indicated, stripped his music back down to its most basic component, Jenkinson’s electric bass. With this new album, he moves the goal post once again away from the concussed drill’n’bass playground that he has made his over the years.

This latest affair started when a bunch of kids got in touch with Jenkinson with the prospect of bringing the fictitious band he had dreamt about, which subsequently led to Just A Souvenir two years ago, to life. Continue Reading »

SQUAREPUSHER
Solo Electric Bass 1
WARP174
Warp Records 2009
12 Tracks. 39mins20secs

CD: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Boomkat Download: Amazon UK | Amazon US | iTunes

Ever since he first appeared on the electronic scene in the mid nineties, Tom Jenkinson has injected his sound with great big slabs of live electric bass, yet this has, until now, been quite secondary in his work. Indeed, it has, at times, been buried deep down beneath crashing drums and lively acid squelches, while, at others it bubbled just below the surface, injecting healthy doses of jazz in his otherwise manic drill’n’bass. This was perhaps never truer than on his 1998 album Music Has Rotted One Note, on which he favoured for a moment a more acoustic approach, but the bass, Jenkinson’s instrument of predilection, has overall remained somewhat in the background, only gaining more attention in a live context. Continue Reading »

SQUAREPUSHER
Just A Souvenir
WARPCD161
Warp Records 2008
14 Tracks. 44mins24secs

The godfather of drill’n’bass is back once more, with his twelfth album, Just A Souvenir. Since he first appeared, in the mid nineties, with a series of EPs for Spymania, amongst others, and his debut album, Feed Me Weird Things, released on Richard D. James’s Rephlex, Tom Jenkinson has continuously remained close to his manic junglistic roots while exploring a variety of sonic spaces, at times digging toward funkier or more rave-infused sources, and at others sticking to jazzier and more improvised forms. His last album however, Hello Everything, published over two years ago, denoted quite a change of tone, with the melody becoming much more of a fundamental element of the compositions.

Just A Souvenir is said to have been inspired by a dream Jenkinson had earlier this year about a rock band playing an ‘ultra-gig’, whatever that is. The album was then recorded in just two weeks, and sees Jenkinson injecting a big dollop of psychedelic rock and eighties electro into his usual jazz-infused electronica. Continue Reading »

SQUAREPUSHER
Hello Everything
WARPCD148
Warp Records 2006
12 Tracks. 63mins41secs

Four years ago, Tom Jenkinson was asking ‘Do You Know Squarepusher?‘ If the album that hid behind this title lured you to think that you did, think again. With his eighth album in eleven years, Tom Jenkinson shakes off his compulsive beats and driving grooves in favour of a much more chilled and eclectic sound.

Tom Jenkinson burst out on the electronic scene in the mid nineties with a series of EPs for Spymania, Rephlex and Worm Interface, and a debut album published on Richard D James’s Rephlex. A seasoned self-taught bass player and drummer, Jenkinson’s particular blend of experimental drum’n’bass dipped in a bubbling bath of digital jazz and acid house and his seminal live performances rapidly brought him a huge following, Since, he has cleverly set the pace for his contemporaries with each new release by cleverly dodging expectations. Continue Reading »

PLUG
Back On Time
ZEN177
Ninja Tune 2012
10 Tracks. 55mins07secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

In the mid-nineties, Luke Vibert, who, beside a venture with Jeremy Simmonds, had mostly been operating as Wagon Christ, reinvented himself as Plug the time of a handful of EPs and an album on which he moved away from the hip-hop-infused electronica of his Rising High releases of the time to distill his own blend of refined Drum’n’Bass. While none of these seemed to get much attention on the D’n’B scene, they showed Vibert as the versatile musician that he is and cemented his position amongst fellow West Country mavericks of the likes of Aphex Twin or Squarepusher

Following this condensed blast of releases, between 1995 and 1997, the project has been on an indefinite hiatus, but a year ago, Luke Vibert turned up at the Ninja Tune office with a bunch of DATs containing previously unheard material recorded around that time. Continue Reading »

Thomas Strønen is undoubtedly one of the most talented drummers of his generation. A member of Food, Humcrush, Meadow, Monsters & Puppets and many more, his very diverse, yet highly recognisable style puts him is at the heart of these projects. With new albums from Monsters & Puppets, Humcrush and The Living Room, Thomas takes some time off his incredibly busy schedule to talk to themilkfactory about how he started playing drums, his long-standing collaboration with Iain Ballamy as Food, his relationship with Maria Kannegaard and how it led to Monsters & Puppets, and what his next solo project may be. Continue Reading »

ROTWANG
Awful
CEQ001
The Conspiracy Of Equals 2010
12 Tracks. 34mins48secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Putting people’s back up before you’ve even made an impression is perhaps not the best way to get noticed for all the right reasons, but it seems like it is the angle Mark Rahman, a musician from Princeton, New Jersey, chose when he dropped a little bit of white powder in the envelops accompanying the demos he sent to record labels. While it is likely that this closed him many doors, it unexpectedly opened one when one of these demos landed on the desk of Jeremiah Trudeaux and he decided to set up The Conspiracy Of Equals in order to release Rotwang’s debut album. So, it seems almost logical that, pushing the anti-promotion a step further, Rahman decided to mark the occasion by promising titling the record Awful. If this all smells a bit too much like a schoolboy prank too far, and actually feels a tad tired, the resulting record actually proves to be a more interesting slice of electronic music than one could expect coming on the back of all this. Continue Reading »

Tyondai Braxton is a member of supergroup Battles, one of the most celebrated bands of recent years. Their debut album, Mirrored, saw them join Warp on the back of two EPs and a single released in a matter of months throughout 2004. The son of legendary experimental jazz composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, Tyondai follows his debut solo album, released in 2002, with an extremely ambitious second record, Central Market on Warp, which combines experimental rock, electronics and full orchestral sections. We caught up with the man via email ahead of his performance, as part of Battles, for the Warp20 celebrations in New York to talk about how he made the transition from his earlier work to the vast expanses of Central Market and how he wants to take this even further. Continue Reading »

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Warp20 (Box Set) / Warp20 (Recreated) / Warp20 (Chosen)
WARP20.0 / WARP201 / WARP 202
Warp Records 2009
– / 21 Tracks / 24 Tracks. – / 99mins13secs / 127mins18secs

Warp20 (Box Set)
Boomkat: BX

Warp20 (Recreated)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

Warp20 (Chosen)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

LFO. Three metallic blue letters, straddled by a ghostly shape, set on a black background. Three letters that changed things forever. The year was 1991, I was browsing through the new arrivals in my local records store, and the Designers Republic artwork of LFO’s Frequencies was standing out from the blur, calling out for my attention. An hour or so later, I was left baffled by a record which I was struggling to understand. On one side, the lush flow and shattering bass of LFO or Simon From Sydney irresistibly titillated my appetite for crisp evocative electronics, on the other, I had never experienced anything quite as bare as Mentok 1 or We Are Back. This album bore its influences on its sleeve, literally, and it took a few listens to ‘get it’. But ‘get it’ I did. More than I could have ever wished for. I was hooked. Not only on LFO, but also on Warp.

The brainchild of Steve Beckett and the late Rob Mitchell, who founded the label twenty years ago in the former metallurgic city of Sheffield, Warp found itself at a crossroad between the dying acid scene and the nascent UK techno/electronica movements Continue Reading »

Rival Consoles first appeared two years ago with a first EP released on London-based Erased Tapes. Since, Ryan Lee West he has delivered two more EPs spanning quite a wide sound world, from Aphex-like abstract drum’n’bass to razor-sharp techno. His debut album, released on Erased Tapes once again, expands greatly on the latter by collecting eleven thumping techno cuts with enough edges to last a lifetime. We took this opportunity to talk to the man about how the album came together, how he uses beats against melody, what it feels like to have his album out in the open and which console is the one. Continue Reading »

CLARK
Totems Flare
WARP185
Warp Records 2009
11 Tracks. 44mins53secs

Buy: CD | LP

It is almost hard to believe that Clark only released his first album eight years ago so much has he become, in that time, one of the strongest, most consistent and emblematic artists on Warp, to the point of challenging the might of heavy weights like Aphex Twin or Squarepusher. His constant deliveries, started with Clarence Park, have since considerably grown in confidence and vision, and his unashamed use of heavily electronic sounds, at a time when others seemed to move away from those, has made him one of the finest purveyors of the genre.

With Totems Flare, Clark’s follow up to last year’s Turning Dragon and his fifth full length, he continues to create strong and gritty electronic music, and he wastes no time showing off his latest dirty grooves with album opener Outside Plume and Growls Garden, the leading track to his recent EP. Continue Reading »