The Raid On Squarepusher Hills Continues

Big Loada winds up what I think of as early Squarepusher - his career is long enough that there are distinct regimes in it. Big Loada is a lot like Hard Normal Daddy, with a lot of acid, breaks, and melody front and centre. A very enjoyable outing.
It's still weird to think that Trent Reznor's label relased it in North America...

Post Big Loada, something happened in the realm of Tom Jenkinson.
Music Is Rotted One Note is a pretty strong departure from his previous work. Whereas before, the jazz in his music was the sort of lite Weather Report kind of fusion, and it shared the stage with his other influences, Music Is Rotted is much more of a Bitches Brew kind of jazz, and aside from some masterful use of reverb ala King Tubby, this smokey, atmospheric fusion dominates the album. This is perhaps the most surprising album in Tom's catalogue, and, aside from the two EPs that followed, it is unique in its single-mindedness. If you like SP for the breaks, you can probably skip this one, although you would be robbing yourself.
The two EPs, Budakhan Mindphone and Maximum Priest are, together, like a second installment of Music Is Rotted... BM is better on the whole, more of the same ideas, but not B-side material. The new tracks on MP are good, but the remixes at the end don't really do anything.

Ever since Music Is Rotted, it seems that every SP release has included his efforts to truly integrate the fusion techniques of that album with his love of DnB, acid, etc.

Selection 16 is a schizophrenic album, in that it has some great acid tracks (e.g., Time Borb, Tomorrow World) interspersed with what has (unkindly) been called 'jazzy noodlings' or something to that effect. It's not a cohesive album, by any stretch of the imagination, and not a highlight of SP, but there are some fantastic tracks on it. The bonus 4 tracks are largely forgettable (some odds and ends plus a Ceefax Acid Crew remix - it must be hard being Tom's brother).

Go Plastic is the return to Amen. Aside from Red Hot Car, a great pop/2-step track, this album is a monochromatic outing, featuring some of the most intimidating drum programming I've heard. Lots of breaks, classic samples, dub effects effects effects , bass-through-a-ringmod, and all out noise. The hard thing about the album is that you'll miss a lot if you're not listening closely. I used to play this guy at work, I don't quite know how I got away with that.

Do You Know Squarepusher - kind of an identity crisis? 2 discs, one which is 30 minutes w/ 7 tracks, and a live CD. The title track is a fantastic slice of pop, there's a bit of 'I can sound like Autechre', a bit of 'Look kids! 300 BPM', a 'rap' track (for want of a better word), a 9 minute ambient piece, and a cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart which is done completely straight. Live CD is completely forgettable. Think selections from this album and Go Plastic with more reverb than usual.

I think of that as the Mid Period Squarepusher, encompassing an album that put him on a higher pedestal than the one he was already on, followed by a period of 'where now' soul searching which had some great stuff, and some not so great stuff.

Next up - the once and future SP.

Feed ME Weird Things Tom!

I shall say it: Listening to Squarepusher is an activity I find generally preferable to listenening to Autechre. I think it's the fact that Tom is interested in making songs with more traditional elements such as melodies and themes that appeals to me. I think too that Squarepusher has achieved a much more complete union of traditional techniques and technology in his work. And he plays a mean bass.

Feed Me Weird Things is still a work in progress in the sense that I don't think SP was fully realised at that stage. There are a few tracks which run a touch too long, and don't shine the way some of his later stuff does, but it's hard to complain when your ass is being kicked with Squarepusher's Theme, or Theme From Ernest Borgnine. It would be quite rude to really.

But!
Hard Normal Daddy.
HARD. NORMAL. DADDY.
(!)
This album was my first exposure to IDM, I remember getting it in Brighton back in something like '99? At first I was a bit underwhelmed, the drums seemed too thin, they lacked the punch of other stuff I was listening to at the time, like ATR and NIN. I was also well into the rave scene by that point, and it was much less obvious than the DnB that I liked so much (Hello there, Goldie, how's the wife and kids?).
I kept at it though, and gradually the album unveiled itself before me. I'd never heard acid before, and certainly never paired with bass that funky. The sweet melodies of Beep Street were nearly permanently on my stereo.
This is to say that HND is good. It's better than good. 10 years isn't enough time to call something a classic, I don't think 20 is, but this is a discussion worth considering in 2023 or so.
And here's the weird thing - I was listening to it now for the first time in quite a while, and I have passed through much more of the classical canon of techno, and the thing that I really feel when I hear HND is how Tom was doing the same thing with a lot of rave genres that Tortoise was doing with rock. His acid isn't straight up acid, it's more like a reference to the acid idea, that he's fused with all of his other ideas...this CD somehow sounds like it could be new, in the way it isn't tied to the prevailing styles of the time the way most albums are.