Feed Me Weird Things

About

When Tom Jenkinson released his debut album as Squarepusher in 1996, critics called it “drill ’n’ bass,” highlighting the music’s rattling intensity and high-velocity drum fills. But that term, which has also been applied to the wilder work of Aphex Twin and Luke Vibert, carries an industrial connotation that couldn’t be further from the giddy colors and almost cartoonish kinetics of Squarepusher’s debut. With the opening track, “Squarepusher Theme,” Jenkinson’s fondness for jazz fusion—along with his own live-wire fretless bass playing—immediately distinguishes it from the era’s jungle and drum ’n’ bass. Jenkinson wasn’t completely out on his own; the eerie synths of “Tundra” demonstrate Squarepusher’s affinity for Aphex Twin’s ethereal braindance (indeed, <i>Feed Me Weird Things</i> originally appeared on Aphex’s Rephlex label), while the tortured breakbeats and gnarled acid of “Dimotane Co” reflect the rhythmic innovations that made late-’90s dance music so dynamic. But Squarepusher’s jubilant melodic sensibility effectively makes him a genre of one. “Smedleys Melody” pairs winsome jazz changes with atom-smashing edits; “Kodack” and “Deep Fried Pizza” are soaked in resonant Rhodes keys and fretboard-mashing bass solos. And “Theme From Ernest Borgnine”—a tribute to the then-septuagenarian actor—is a percussive masterpiece topped off with some of the most affecting synths in the history of IDM.

via Apple Music