Timmy84 said:

Gotta love the ones who just straight experiment with their works...

We're just gettin' started. Some of my favorite music of all-time, in any genre, is comin' up here pretty quick.

Cerebus said:

Timmy84 said:

Gotta love the ones who just straight experiment with their works...

We're just gettin' started. Some of my favorite music of all-time, in any genre, is comin' up here pretty quick.

Cool.

Things started looking up a bit with the next EP in 1994, Stereotype. The music is still very simple in form and structure, but it does start to sound like Squarepusher around the edges.

Plus, the first track on the a-side was this beast of a jam. Really quite beautiful if you can just forget you're listening and let it take over.

Whooshki

Falling, the third track on the b-side of the Stereotype EP. Almost a breakbeat, but not quite! This track is actually very much the kind of thing that was going on in Germany at the time (DJ Hell, Eye Q and Harthouse Records, Tresor, etc.). Real hard, dark stuff. Tom makes it his own with the synth patches he chooses, but he still keeps them behind the drum programming in the mix.

O'Brien (Darkness Version), the fourth track on the b-side of the Stereotype EP. Still almost a breakbeat. Very close. But really it's more or a stuttering beat. This is a nice combination of English acid house and the hard German stuff I mentioned above. This is a pretty unfeeling track, overall.... but you wouldn't notice if you were in a club on acid at four o' clock in the morning back in '94.

Edit: Stoopud missing h.

[Edited 5/24/12 20:15pm]

1995. Alory Road Tracks featuring the Duke of Harringay. Yeah, with that album title it was DESTINED for greatness. However, it SOUNDS like Squarepusher. All of a sudden there's slap bass and other live instrumentation and he's not trying to hide it. It's mixed in front of the drum programming.

Central Line, the first track on the a-side of Alroy Road Tracks. Sounds like what he was working for with the first tracks on both of the first two Squarepusher albums.

Sarcacid Part 1, the second track on the a-side of Alroy Road Tracks. The first minute of this track is pretty boring, and the drum programming has never really done much for me overall. But the melodies - the organ, keyboard and bass lines - sound like they come from a lost late 70s tv show. I think it's the first time he released a recorded bass solo, as well.

Sarcacid Part 2, the third track on the a-side of Alroy Road Tracks. Has absolutely nothing to do with Part 1, but it's another of those tracks that sounds like what Squarepusher would end up being in the future.

@ "Whooshki"...

Also in 1995 was the Conumber EP, and I really don't like this release. It's very repetative - kind of boring, actually (imo). But then, keep in mind that I'm not posting all the tracks from ANY of the releases. So somebody else could absolutely love something that doesn't cream my twinkie in the slightest. That's for other people to discover and decide for themsevles.

All that being said, there's a still a gem to be found on this release. Should make for a quick post, though.

Male Pill 5, the first track on the b-side of the Conumber EP. The first "Male Pill". Not sure what the meaning of that title is for Tom, but he's used it several times.

This track was either re-released under a different name, or sounds an awful lot like something that came a couple years later. ... maybe I've just listened to it too many times. It's a decent enough jam. Could be a little shorter, maybe.

Eviscerate (Version), the third track on the b-side of the Conumber EP. Love! This track alone made the cost of Buningn'n Tree worth it (for me, anyway). Relentless, snare rolling, break beat with a very simple synth melody drifting slowly over the top, just a splash of bass 3/4 of the way through the track.

1996. Some real short, very limited, hard to get a hold of stuff that Tom slipped out in between his 'Pusher releases.

The first was the split 12" with Dunderhead that contains a real classic titled, I Was Livid. I've always assumed the bit used at the beginning is a sample, although I don't know what it is. But it's really not until after the 3:00 mark where it gets weird. From then on things never quite get settled. Slightly psychedelic, a little woozy.

I Was Livid, the first track on the b-side of the Dragon Disc 2 split 12".

The other sneaker that year was the Bubble & Squeak EP...

"Bubble and squeak is a traditional English dish, named after the sound made whilst cooking,^[1] and made with the shallow-fried leftover vegetables from a roast dinner. The main ingredients are potato and cabbage, but carrots, peas, brussels sprouts, and other vegetables can be added. The cold chopped vegetables (and cold chopped meat if used) are fried in a pan together with mashed potatoes or crushed roast potatoes until the mixture is well-cooked and brown on the sides. It is often served with cold meat from the Sunday roast, and pickles or brown sauce.

The meat was traditionally added to the bubble and squeak itself, although nowadays it is more commonly made without meat. The earliest known recipe was by Maria Rundell in 1806.^[2]

The name bubble and squeak is used throughout the United Kingdom, and it may also be understood in parts of some other Commonwealth countries and the United States.^[3][4]

Bubble and squeak was a popular dish during World War II, as it was an easy way of using leftovers during a period when most foods were subject to rationing. In more recent times, pre-prepared frozen and tinned versions have become available."

People knew who Tom was by this point and the initial pressing of this release was 200 silk-screened sleeves. Needless to say, a lot of people wanted this and couldn't get it. As such, it was re-pressed, but there are still very limited quantities of it "out there". People who own this one get to brag about it.

Bubble, Side A

Squeak, Side B

Sounds like "I Was Livid" has a nice sample but I don't know what song it supposedly samples on it...

Timmy84 said:

Sounds like "I Was Livid" has a nice sample but I don't know what song it supposedly samples on it...

....that's what I said.

Cerebus said:

Timmy84 said:

Sounds like "I Was Livid" has a nice sample but I don't know what song it supposedly samples on it...

....that's what I said.

But yeah I wonder what it sampled. It sounds familiar but right now I can't figure out the name...

Aaaaaannnnnnd, finally, we're back to 1997. As I meantioned somwhere back on page one, Burningn'n Tree included three bonus tracks. Here's two of them.

Untitled, track five on Burningn'n Tree. Nice three minute burner. Some new beat programming from Tom in this one. Very resltess. Some of his tracks will work with one idea over 5-10 minutes, others will constantly move around, tossing off five or six ideas in one song. This is one of the latter as it never really settles down. Its definitely built around the bass work, though.

Untitled, track nine on Burningn'n Tree. Classic. I wish this track was 20 minutes long, because then I wouldn't have to listen to it fifteen times in a row.

Next: After I drink a cup of coffee, the glory year of 1998...

Timmy84 said:

Cerebus said:

....that's what I said.

But yeah I wonder what it sampled. It sounds familiar but right now I can't figure out the name...

Don't know. It's hard to tell for me because he's written so much stuff that sounds similar, but I'm sure that's a sample. It's sounds too much like a loop to be his own stuff. Unfortunately, teh internets don't know, either.

Rococo said:

for a beginner, is feed me weird things, a great way to being listening to the work of squarepusher or this another album, i should begin with?

I'm not ignoring this question. In fact, I've been thinking about it since you first posted it. Problem is, I can't come up with a good answer. I could give you four or five albums that I think are really good, and that would probably be the best way to tackle the massive mountain of music he's released. But that would kind of take away from the flow of the thread. So I'm thinking starting at the beginning is never a bad thing! "Feed Me Weird Things" is definitely a solid album. It would be one of the four or five.

Cerebus said:

Timmy84 said:

But yeah I wonder what it sampled. It sounds familiar but right now I can't figure out the name...

Don't know. It's hard to tell for me because he's written so much stuff that sounds similar, but I'm sure that's a sample. It's sounds too much like a loop to be his own stuff. Unfortunately, teh internets don't know, either.

Yeah I see.

I'm puttin' off 1998 until tomorrow. I want to tackle it with a proper headspace and I'm kind of out of it at this point. I'm gonna go watch Safe House.

OK. So, at this point you may have noticed that Mr. Jenkinson was releasing albums, EPs and random twelve inches at a fairly rapid pace. Nothing too extreme by today's internet standards. But a pretty good clip for non-dancefloor oriented electronic music in the mid 90s.

1998 was a bit slower, with just two full-lengths released five months apart and two very short, mostly non-essential vinyl pieces that were associated with the albums proper. Whether it was purposeful or mere coincidence, both albums are totally different than what he'd been releasing previously, both brilliant, both classics.

The first of these was released in May, 1998, a full six months after his last full-length. It was also back on Rephlex Records, but this time under an alias; Chaos A.D.

Now, Rephlex as a whole does things a bit differently. Like I said previously, their releases are usually pressed in small quantities and very rarely is anything re-issued (the Buzz Caner release, on CD or LP, is on ebay right now ranging from $30-$60, which is quite a lot in the age of being able to download everything for free). But they also have a certain, very particular sound to everything they've released. From day one, back in 1991, to the stuff they released earlier this year. They call in "Braindance", and by their own definition it doesn't apply to any one particular genre of music. Rather, it's a feeling, a vibe, a quality.

The Chaos A.D. album is definitely Braindance. It's Squarepusher, but it feels stoned, drunk, hazy, maybe a little angry and a little meloncholic... like the machines went to a party, got wasted, then got lost in a dark forest on their way home. It's also, easily, one of my favorite electronic albums of all-time.

Next: Selected tracks from Chaos A.D. - Buzz Caner... well, really, most of the album

Chaos A.D. - Buzz Canner

May 28, 1998

Rephlex Records

As you can see from the image above, there is clearly a possibility that at least some of these were older tracks seeing release for the first time. Personally, do to the quality of the sound in relation to his earlier work, I don't think that's the case.

I think it's more likely that Rich was either privy to the creation of a lot of what Tom was writing back then and was able to get him to hold off releasing these until they had an albums worth. Or, what I think is more likely, Tom went out of his way to create an album that sounded like it belonged on Rephlex (possibly even using Rich's equipment in the process). There's also the possibility, since a good deal of these tracks have an early Aphex Twin vibe/sound, that it's something they created together (as has been rumored with other releases, including one that came out this year). And of course they could all be old tracks that came from the tapes on the cover of the album.

Since those guys don't ever talk about that stuff (at least not with an ounce of truth involved), we'll probably never know.

Thin Life: The first track on Buzz Caner. Alien ships float slowly through the mist, vague shapes fall through the darkness, landing silently on the ground. They turn towards you, dim lights obscure your vision as strange voices issue forth from the darkness.... or something like that, I think I'm too unbiased to give real descriptions of these tracks. They're kind of part of my being at this point.

Mess Head: The second track on Buzz Caner. The machines stop suddenly, realizing they're lost. At first they scream out at the terror of the unkown. Then, they run through the forest, without direction or purpose. Just running. Because running is better than standing still in the darkness....

Bioslate: The third track on Buzz Caner. ...suddenly, a clearing. Moonlight. They stop, look around.... a fellow called Roland speaks, and at once they begin dancing to a strange, minimal acid groove.

Dreaded Pestilence: The fifth track on Buzz Caner. Strange lights move through the forest on the far side of the clearing. The machines stop dancing, quizically looking to one another for answers. Pulsing vibrations move through the Earth.... and they're getting closer...

Mind War Electro: The sixth track on Buzz Caner. The aliens enter the clearing. Roland steps forward and introduces himself. Everything is forgotten as alien and machine dance together in reckless abandonment.

Friend Track: The seventh track on Buzz Caner. Satiated by their recently completed pagan ritual, the aliens and machines lay back in the cool grass of the clearing and watch as the full moon drifts through the mist overhead...

Psultan Part 1: The eighth track on Buzz Caner. Some of the aliens and machines begin having deep, philosophical discussions about their perceptions of the various meanings of love and friendship while Roland leads others in the dancing of a joyous jig around the edges of clearing...

Up The Gary: The eleventh track on Buzz Caner. The conversation shifts... someone broaches the topic of governemnt... followed closely by politics and religion. Dischord. Unharmonious voices. The dancers try to keep dancing... but the dischord spreads, and eventually it becomes impossible...

Davey's Safety Lamp: The twelfth track on Buzz Caner. Realizing that they are more alike than they are different, and with the sunrise quickly approaching, the aliens tell the machines that there's a road just a bit past the clearing on the side they entered from. So with smiles on all their faces, side by side, alien and machine walk slowly through a forest of long shadows created by the rising sun shining through the trees...

There was also a Chaos A.D. remix twelve inch...

This release would be completely useless if not for the Squarepusher Remix of Psultan (I disliked the other tracks so much that I was actually mad when I bought it). Thankfully that track was included on the first Rephlex Records compilation, The Braindance Conincidence, so NOBODY needs to pay high prices to hunt down the original twelve inch.

The Squarepusher remix of Psultan is very solid, however. It illustrates perfectly the difference between what Squarepusher sounded like before and what he sounded like as Chaos A.D.

The other album released in 1998...

Music Is Rotted One Note

Music Is Rotted One Note

Live instrumentation, everything performed by Mr. Jenkinson, shorter songs, improvisation, free jazz, electroacoustic, ambient. There was no sequencing or sampling used in the production of this album. Some people found/find it to be more mellow, relaxed. Personally, I don't. I think it's very tense, tight, wanting for a way to let go.

It's also completely brilliant, in my opinion.

Tom has never released anything else exactly like this album. Some of his releases in the future live around the edges of the same city, but they don't venture all the way downtown too often. It's was definitely a challenging listen if you expecting it to sound anything like his previous releases.

Music Is Rotted One Note

Wikipedia has a couple quotes from Tom about this album...

"One of the reasons that I headed in that direction as opposed to the more computer sequence-type stuff is because I was actually beginning to feel really limited using sequencers and samplers...I was really beginning to yearn for the sort of unpredictability of the randomness of improvising with live instruments. I was just starting to choke. The sequencer is too square, too digital. I just wanted to get really fucking loose and just start again somehow."

"There were also other principles at play at this time relating to harmonic content. One was that I was to abandon the overt usage of melody. This was because I had come to see it as a cheap way of getting people to like my music. It disgusted me that it was so easy to appeal to people and I thus introduced arbitrary rules to make it harder."

Music Is Rotted One Note

It definitely has a better overall affect if you listen to the songs in order. So, no more words for this one. Just the album, in it's entirety...

Music Is Rotted One Note

Oct 12, 1998

Warp Records

Side A

Track One - Chunk-S

Track Two - Don't Go Plastic

Track Three - Dust Switch

Track Four - Curve 1

Track Five - 137 (Rinse)

Track Six - Parrallelogram Bin

Track Seven - Circular Flexing

Music Is Rotted One Note continued...

Side B

Track One/Eight - Ill Descent

Track Two/Nine - My Sound OK, a couple of words. This song is bad ass. One of the greatest things he's ever done. I'd call this song "My Sound" if I wrote and played everything on it, too. It's also the first/only reprieve from the sense of isolation and opprsession you get from the rest of the album. Instead, it feels like it's accepted it's fate. It knows the world it enhabits is cold, dark and lonely and decides to say, "fuck it", and do a melancholic dance around the room, anyway.

Track Three/Ten - Drunken Style

Track Four/Eleven - Theme From Vertical Hold

Track Five/Twelve - Ruin

Track Six/Thirteen - Shin Triad

Track Seven/Fourteen - Step 1

Track Eight/Fifteen - Last Ap Roach

Next: Partying like it was 1999... because it was... 1999

For whatever reason, 1999 was the years I started to take less interest in owning every Squarepusher release the week they became available. After what were two stellar releases (to my ears) in 1998, the stuff released in 1999 just didn't have the same overriding level of quality and originality. I pretty much stopped listening to the entire releases and started focusing in on my favorite tracks. For the most part that's how I've listened to his music ever since, save for a couple of great ones here and there.

However, that doesn't mean he wasn't still creating some incredible music. He definitely was....

Budakhan Mindphone

March 1, 1999

Warp Records

Iambic 5 Poetry: The first track on Budakhan Mindphone. Undeniably a very beautiful track. Without hyperbole, it's one of my single favorite tracks, from anybody, any kind of music. Clearly spawned from the same part of his mind that created "My Sound" on 'Music Is Rotted One Note'. They greatly resemble each other in form, tempo and feel.

I once had a girl tell me this song sounded "romantic" while we were listening to it. I had to adjust my brain a little to see where she was coming from back then. Now, in hindsight, and with the age to look at it from that point of view, yeah, I guess it is. I don't particularly think it's something he went for before this point, but it's a place he would visit again from time to time on future releases.

As much as I'd like to find something else from Budakhan Mindphone to post, I don't really think anything is good enough. It's not that the music is bad, it's just not great, and I'd rather move on to some tracks that I think get closer to that end of the spectrum. The names of the rest of the tracks on the album cover image at the beginning of this post. You can check 'em out yourself if you feel so inclined.

[Edited 5/29/12 19:44pm]

Pause: Because there's a song I want to post that isn't on YouTube in it's proper form. I hate it when that happens.

OK.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Sqaurepusher...

Maximum Priest E.P.

July 16, 1999

Warp Records

The next release in 1999 was the Maximum Priest E.P. It contained four new tracks on the a side and three remixes on the b side (unless you bought it on CD, of course).

Another hit and miss release for me, with another beautiful Squarepusher classic to make you not feel totally disappointed with paying $10 for it. I didn't care for any of the remixes, which was very disappointing considering I like(d) all three of the remixers.

Song: Our Underwater Torch: The first track on the Maximum Priest E.P. Another chilled out slow one in the vein of "Iambic 5 Poetry" and "My Sound". Maybe not quite as melodic as those two. It definitely has a Portishead, Massive Attack dark, trip-hop vibe to it, as well. If you compiled those three with a few like tracks from future releases you'd have a very relaxing, possibly romantic Squarepusher mix tape.

You're Going Down: The third track on the Maximum Priest E.P. Chilled out, downtempo funk number with some nice vibraphone work. Would be very relaxing if it weren't for the completely twisted and out of nowhere middle eight.

[Edited 5/29/12 19:44pm]

The next (or possibly last, I'm not sure - more on that in a bit) release from 1999 was the full-length, "Selection Sixteen". I remember this album being hyped for quite a while prior to it's release. Warp really went big to try and build anticipation, but it mostly falls flat. I remember being really excited, too, because the double vinyl version came with a bonus ten inch with four extra songs and the ridiculously promising title of "Anti-Greylord Protection Scheme Prelude". But those were also mostly really disappointing.

It wasn't a total loss, though! It did seem to be Tom's first attempts at combining some of what he'd been doing on his last few releases with live instrumentation and few sequenced tracks with his earlier, hard electronic stuff. It's got some great acid, rave-like, old school stompers on it. Those are definitely my favorites from this release, and that seems to be the same for most people who've listened to a decent amount of Tom's work.

Selections Sixteen/Anti-Greylord Protection Scheme Prelude

Nov 8, 1999

Warp Records

To no surprise at all, a lot of the tracks from this release aren't even on YouTube. Here's a few of the tracks I dig that are available...

Time Borb: The third track on Selection Sixteen. Always dug the quick swith from the chilled-out live stuff to the angry acid lines on this track, but it's way too short to have much affect outside of listening to the album as it was originally sequenced.

Dedicated Loop: The fourth track on Selection Sixteen. Yaaayesss! Now that's more like it! Coming directly after "Time Borb" we find this great, DANCEABLE little gem. After a short intro we get about three full minutes of old school Squarepusher greatness. The Roland 303 acid line, ambient synth patches, a ridiculously catchy repeated three note phrase on the one - really good stuff. And it's one of those great tracks that feels like it's moving. I've played this one loudly with the windows down while speeding along the California coast - it works. I actually wish this one was a bit longer.

Freeway: The eighth track on Selection Sixteen. Sweet jazz/funk throw down. There's a lot goin' on considering the track is only 1:40 long. Really not sure why Tom was keeping some of these tracks so short around this time. Probably just what he was feeling at the moment, but it's definitely not the norm before or after the 98-99 time period.

Snake Pass: The ninth track on Selection Sixteen. Straight ahead, four on the floor acid banger. I love this one, but truthfully, there's not a lot going on here.

Snake Pass is a road. "The Snake Pass is the name given to the remote, higher reaches of the A57 road where it crosses the Peak District between Manchester and Sheffield in Northern England" It has a long Wiki page and a ton of videos of people driving it on YouTube.

For some reason all the videos for this track have kind of shit sound.