Squarepusher Feed Me Weird Things CD

Squarepusher is freakishly inventive--by turns moody ("Tundra," "Goodnight Jade," "U.F.O.s Over Leytonstone"), manic ("North Circular," "The Swifty," "Windscale 2"), mad as a March hare ("Dimotane Co," the laugh-out-loud funny "Smedley's Melody," "Future Gibbon"), and flat-out brilliant ("Kodack"). On "Theme From Ernest Borgnine," Jenkinson cribs melodies from U-Ziq and the Aphex Twin (whose Rephlex label issued FEED ME) and betrays his electronica roots. But Squarepusher's dazzling breaks-work is utterly without precedent. The impact of his upheaval of drum-and-bass convention had dulled slightly by the time of FEED ME's release. Too many copycats had run with his formula in every direction but originality. Nonetheless, this remains an astonishing record--perhaps the pinnacle of jazzed-up, schizoid outsider drum-n-bass.

With 12 tracks of lunacy, mayhem, and sheer beauty, Tom Jenkinson's 1996 debut as Squarepusher remains one of the few must-have records of the electronica revolution. Though Jenkinson builds his tracks around his remarkable fusion-inspired fretless bass playing, the album initially sounds like a study in maniacally intricate drum solos and patterns, themselves built from a few Roland drum machines. But closer listening reveals a keen intellect at work. Jenkinson has no interest in either the repetitive drum patterns most junglists prefer or their vapid soundscapes. Instead his songs douse you in rhythm and melody. The acoustic Brazilian guitar of 'Squarepusher Theme' is soon devoured by a steaming, staccato drum groove, the track ultimately resolving itself as a kind of 21st-century Latin jazz epic. 'Tundra' recalls a battery of mad insects destroying a caterpillar; 'UFOs over Leytonstone' creates a slow death rumba; 'Kodack' revels in glistening beats and streamlined and manic synths, a sign of Squarepusher to come. 'Goodnight Jade' is the album's most unusual track, a lush, ambient drone of lovely bass harmonics and a mouselike melody, showing Jenkinson to be a composer of surprising weight and depth. Squarepusher would make records harder, more intense, and more spectacular, but none more musical than Feed Me Weird Things. Rephlex. 2005.

While DJs were busy squabbling over the distinction between "intelligent" drum-and-bass and "stupid" floor-fodder, 21-year-old Tom Jenkinson dropped "Squarepusher Theme" and bombed all other practitioners of the breakbeat science back to the Stone Age. This virtually unknown Cornwall resident had rewritten the rulebook for both the "drum" and "bass" factors of the popular dancehall equation. Jenkinson's supremely sweet, funky, and unabashedly bravado fretless chops likened him to nimble-fingered fusioneer Jaco Pastorius; his breathlessly dynamic and acrobatic rhythms bespoke a singular imagination.

Squarepusher includes: Tom Jenkinson.