Ultravisitor - Squarepusher

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Tom Jenkinson a. k. a. SQUAREPUSHER makes the kind of music that might get stressful and annoying at times but which will never get boring or stale. Dabbling in electronic music since 1995, he has since become a master in the art, and is known for his chaffing breakbeats and dentist's drill sounds. However, he also plays the bass and has bona fide jazz influences. Quite often he samples himself to get raw material for his painstakingly ...
.../> Talk about de-constructing and re-assembling rhythms and you'll have to talk about Tom Jenkinson. He is to drum 'n bass what Jimi Hendrix was to rock 'n roll: desecrator of mausoleums, resurrector of spirits, innovator of styles. SQUAREPUSHER might not be as well-known as his label-mate (Warp & Rephlex records) Richard D. James (a. k. a. APHEX TWIN), but he is at least as important in terms of musical endeavours into the hitherto unthinkable. ... more

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Tom Jenkinson a. k. a. SQUAREPUSHER makes the kind of music that might get stressful and annoying at times but which will never get boring or stale. Dabbling in electronic music since 1995, he has since become a master in the art, and is known for his chaffing breakbeats and dentist's drill sounds. However, he also plays the bass and has bona fide jazz influences. Quite often he samples himself to get raw material for his painstakingly constructed pieces of (sometimes downright chaotic) neo-noise.

Talk about de-constructing and re-assembling rhythms and you'll have to talk about Tom Jenkinson. He is to drum 'n bass what Jimi Hendrix was to rock 'n roll: desecrator of mausoleums, resurrector of spirits, innovator of styles. SQUAREPUSHER might not be as well-known as his label-mate (Warp & Rephlex records) Richard D. James (a. k. a. APHEX TWIN), but he is at least as important in terms of musical endeavours into the hitherto unthinkable.

Just about three years and two albums from his 2001 endeavour "Go Plastic", SQUAREPUSHER has changed his style remarkably without losing his trademark edge on electronic music. So, how has SQUAREPUSHER evolved, then? Has he mellowed and finally settled down from his wild and weird styles and his sometimes abrupt changes, breaks and full-on assaults on the unexpected listener's ears? Has he become tauntingly more daring and branched out into new and even stranger territory of styles? The answer to both these questions is "yes and no". Yes, he has perfected the flow of things and made for smoother transitions. And yes, he has expanded his repertoire of styles massively. But no, he has not gone down the easy road of do-what-you-are-known-to-do-best-and-care-what-the-public-expects-you-to-do . And no, he has not become totally unlistenable because of the huge intake of more weirdness and diversity since "Go Plastic". In short: He has become more focussed, but with a gliding eye. That's what makes "Ultravisitor" both denser and more panoramic.

I couldn't possibly go into details concerning both the lushness and the harshness, the beauty and the edge of Tom Jenkinson's new sound on "Ultravisitor". Instead, I will briefly glide over the album's range of styles, focussing in more detail only on some of the tracks on offer.

The 8-&-1/2-min. title track 'Ultravisitor' starts out on the dub side of things, then heads into d&b territory, albeit spiced up with an entrancingly melodic guitar-like line running over these rhythms and with dub untercurrents still persevering, until it finally ebbs away into a calming church organ reverie of sorts.

Casual, slightly dizzy, endowed with that comfortably numb, lazy, almost hungover, Sunday afternoon = morning after smugness, 'I Fulcrum' is and just fluffy enough to be considered pop(ular) music, yet jazzy enough to pass as a viable alternative.

'Iambic Poetry' has a somewhat more upbeat feel to it, but runs just as smoothly, bringing a much appreciated dose of freshness after its slacker predecessor. Ambient lines meandering over a crisp and steadily rolling drum beat. If it were an ice cream, it would have to be 'lime creme special'.

'Andrei' is slow and mellow; anything but agitated, it rays out comfy self-assurance; a familiar interplay of guitar and bass, sans genre in itself but exuding a certain jazz sensibility.

'50 Cycles' runs a loopy eight and a half minutes of chilled, claustrophobic, richochet dub sounds and a much entangled flow of paranoid sounding, out of breath rap verses; AESOP ROCK's "Bazooka Tooth" comes to mind.

'Menelec' (a comparably mellow, yet mildly distressing, track) starts with a bell sound and what seems like chirping birds in the background. An ambience of echo-laden sounds drifts by, watery, cool, dripping, soothing, spaced out. A gentle drum 'n bass / jungle rhythm begins to soar, slowly picking up speed and intensity. it is built up deftly, delivered with an ever growing range of frequencies. distortion and frequency shifts become heavier, the overall sound turns from nerdy to jumpy to eerie, and, as the rhythms become layered and more and more complex, melodic routines evolve, becoming more prominent, bouncy and strange, shifting and morphing all the time, until the last remnants of 'drum 'n bass'-orderliness disintegrate into something completely freakish and 'jungle' (in the 'vast chaos teeming with strange & alien critters' sense of the word).

'C-Town Smash' sounds like time-warped jazz, played on a worn-out rubber band, recorded on a one-track tape dictaphone, re-played on a battered walkman, then sent by radio across lightyears of static.

The rather acerbic track 'Steinbolt' sounds a bit like the noise an old-fashioned needle-printer might make (if it were suddenly animated by breath of god) in the attempt to communicate with humans assembled at a mid-nineties rave. It starts out excentric but nice as a screeching, frantic, high-frequency, melodic, yet bass-heavy, full-on dancehall-style assault on unweaned ears but nevertheless an accessible delight for the accustomed SQUAREPUSHER listener - but then it gets entangled in its own quirkiness, stuttering, overtaken by heavy beats and panic-stricken distortion, accumulating sounds of disfunction, echo, delay, pneumatic pressure and rage - until, at last, it is clouded by gloomy ambient soundtrack music, which appears out of nowhere, slowly subdues the hectic melee of haywire sounds, and - like a catalyst - prepares way for the re-emergence of structure from this post-modern primeval soup of technological sounds.

'An Arched Pathway' is far from concrete, made up of contrasts, oblique, intangible, minimal, minuscule.

The eerie, bottleneck sounding 'Telluric Piece' comes across like a slowly dawning afterthought to it.

'District Line II' is completely out there, shapeshifting, anamorphic, mind-boggling, and yet well-structured, understated, non-chalant, playing it cool. Arguably the most typical SQUAREPUSHER track on this album.

'Circlewave' comes from a completely different angle, starting with understated, flatly dealt-out drum rolls of clearly jazzy origins. Taking these as a core for crystallization, Jenkinson then continues to build a laid-back ambient track around them, making use of various drifting and swaying organ- / keyboard- / synthesizer-sounds, as well as some lightweight cymbal-crashs thrown in for additional freshness and crispiness. This is a nice track to chill out to without running the risk of having the listener fall asleep or entering cheesy dream-pop territory.

Another prime showcase for the sheer MessyGenius(tm)-ness of Tom J. is 'Tetra-Sync'. This slick & slack chill-out über-track is similar to 'Circlewave' in its initial approach of mixing jazz-patterns with spheric ambient sounds and a rather basic, down-to-earth flow of various drum 'n bass rhythms. 'Tetra-Sync', although constantly changing, is very easy to dig: Winding itself through variations of a short melodic theme (which sounds as if lifted from the soundtrack of some obscure 1970's cartoon space opera series), it has a very intuitive feel to it, and all the different sources of spaced-out sound come natural to the steady flow of lively beats. There's a lot of plucked bass involved, and a cool drum solo, too, both adding some homely jazz-flavour to an otherwise far-out sound.

'Tommib Help Buss', for a change, is an introverted and melodic interlude which sounds like a tune from a musical box.

Clocking in at just over two-and-a-half minutes, 'Every Day I Love' takes us to the green pastures of yet another musical zone explored by SQUAREPUSHER: Acoustic guitar-play, almost of the classical kind; mild-mannered and easy-going, dreamlike, pastoral, simple and beautiful.

"Ultravisitor" is
more than just a bag full of tricks,
it's a whole universe-in-a-pocket.
Always distinguishable, never bland.
Always original, never formulaic.
Even if you are only mildly interested
in electronic music: Go check it out!

A quick rundown on SQUAREPUSHER:
http://www.betterpropaganda.com/artist_page.asp?id=438

Tom Jenkinson @ "The Culture Show" (BBC 2):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uZ0LL1SJ-6U

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