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Squarepusher Research Paper
StoreTags: squarepusher, research, paper
Author: nagrom on June 21 2007 Viewed 2648 times. 10 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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So, for my music theory final at school, I had to write a paper on a musician. I chose Squarepusher.
It's by no means impressive (I wrote it in two hours and didn't proofread), and it's probably factually incorrect in many places, but you might find it interesting:
Squarepusher: The Most Influential Musician Nobody's Heard Of Yet Everybody Seems to Know
Just as rock 'n' roll, jazz, and pop have their all-time greats -- people like Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Radiohead, Louis Armstrong, The Beatles, Nirvana, Michael Jackson -- so does the world of so-called "intelligent" electronic music. In the early 90's, a few years after the birth and rapid proliferation of techno, house, and other forms of electronic dance music, a small record label (Warp Records) released a compilation called "Artifical Intelligence". The disc featured a host of artists using electronic instruments, like their techno forefathers, but their music was not intended for the dance floor. This compilation proved to be iconic, marking the beginning of a new era in electronic music, one where artists were free to fully explore the limits of their equipment and of music. Among the great pioneers of "IDM" (Intelligent Dance Music) is the enigmatic Squarepusher.
Squarepusher was born Tom Jenkinson in Chelmsford, England in 1975. Though he was initially interested in electronics as a child, he bought a guitar when he was ten and, after deciding that lessons were a waste of time, began teaching himself how to play. Later, inspired by a solo in a Paul Simon song, he began learning the bass, which would become his primary instrument. He developed his talent, first in a high-school heavy metal band, and then with various funk, rock, and progressive rock outfits as he approached his twenties. Though he was primarily an instrumentalist, he experimented throughout his youth with programmed computer music and drum machines. When he was a teenager, he programmed songs on a Vic20 computer. According to his website, the songs sounded horrible because the programs he wrote could only approximate equal temperament. Later on, he recorded songs with a Roland TR-505 drum machine and a 4 track recorder. However, the real beginning of Squarepusher as an electronic musician was sparked when he heard "LFO" by LFO, an early 90's techno track that resembled the music it would inspire him to write three years later. Suddenly fascinated with techno, Jenkinson began attending raves and parties with his friends, acquiring the taste for the electronic sound. In 1992, he took a step in a unique direction by bringing his bass to a dance party that a friend was DJing. He improvised on his bass to the music and, according to his website biography, "Tom remembers this as a pivotal moment in the development of his musical interests. A fusion of the two worlds of instrumental and electronically based music now strongly beckoned."
Jenkinson's first releases, under his real name, were centered around the Roland TB-303 bassline machine, a synthesizer designed in the 80's for accompaniment that was abused by Phuture and DJ Pierre in the late 80's for its alien-like squelchy sound and unique, badly-designed-but-in-a-good-way 16-step sequencer. The synthesizer has become an electronic music icon and soon after Phuture's "Acid Trax" was released, the machine single-handedly spawned an entire genre of music: "acid". His subsequent releases, as Squarepusher and Duke of Harringay in '94 and '95, which were compiled into 1997's "Burning'n Tree", were a unique combination of repetitive jazzy bass playing and drum 'n' bass influenced break-beats. (Drum 'n' bass is genre that emerged around 1993 that's based around the sampling of "break beats" from 60's and 70's funk and jazz records. Typically, a breakbeat is sampled, looped, replayed, and chopped at a break-neck speed [160-180 bpm], accompanied by deep synthetic half-time bass). His release garnered surprising esteem from his friends and from the electronic music community. The unique fusion of solid instrumentation and a jazzy take on drum 'n' bass was unparalleled, and it fit nicely into what a pocket of other electronic musicians, those featured on the "Artifical Intelligence" compilation, were doing at the time.
Jenkinson's sound reflects five main influences: the bass playing of prodigious bass guitarists like Flea and Jaco Pastorious, acid (house), early 90's drum 'n' bass (also called "jungle"), 70's jazz, and, oddly enough, 70's dub from the likes of King Tubby and Agustus Pablo (noticeable in tracks like "Iambic 5 Poetry" and his Maximum Priest EP). He has combined these aspects of his musical personality in almost every way possible, favoring some over others from track to track and adding additional influences as he progresses. After his initial acid releases and subsequent bass-guitar/drum 'n' bass amalgamations, he acquired a suite of proper synthesizers, drum machines, and recording devices and delved into the world of electronic music. His first full-length release as Squarepusher, "Feed Me Weird Things", released on Rephlex Records, a label associated with many of the original "Artificial Intelligence" artists (they later released similar compilations, notably "The Braindance Coincidence", on which Jenkinson appears as "Chaos A.D."), ushered in a suddenly mature Jenkinson. Drawing more heavily from drum 'n' bass and his label mates' complex experimental style, his material took on a the distinctive form that it's most known for. In an interview with Jason Gross in 1999, Jenkinson discusses his early fascination with the musical aesthetic of "mind fuck". The early Squarepusher music clearly epitomizes this notion. Combining sporadic slap-bass, chopped up break-beats that seldom repeat a rhythmic pattern, and mind-bending synthesizer squelches, the music of "Feed Me Weird Things" as well as the subsequent "Hard Normal Daddy" and "Big Loada", is mind-numbing and intense. Deemed a pioneer of "drill 'n' bass" (a play on drum 'n' bass), Squarepusher quickly gained iconic status in the newly formed IDM scene for his unparalleled complexity and conceptual vision. For "Hard Normal Daddy", Squarepusher was signed to Warp Records, the label that released the Artificial Intelligence series and serves as home for the most creative names in experimental electronic music (notably Aphex Twin and Autechre).
Discovering electronic music has allowed Jenkinson to reconcile is interest in computers and electronics with his passion for art. In a somewhat long winded philosophical rant posted on various Internet websites, he describes his drive to control the machines that give rise to his music: "I, Squarepusher, hold the view that the influence of the structural aspect of music making is in general underestimated. By structural aspect, I refer to the machinery of music making eg: acoustic and electric instruments, computers, electronic processing devices etc...Thus I encourage anybody remotely interested in making music to boldly investigate exactly what the rules are to which you, as a modern musician, are subject. Only thus can you have a hope in bending and ultimately rewriting them." What really isolate Squarepusher as a musical genius is his propensity to be uncompromising in his artistic vision. In his 1999 interview with Gross, he spoke of his experience with bands before his discovery of electronic music: "I couldn't find a group that wanted to do what I wanted to do. No one was really up for it." When he discovered electronic music in he early 90's, he did not simply enjoy the sound and wish to recreate, he saw the methods and realized that with electronic instruments, he could achieve, musically, what he needed to.
Following Big Loada in 1997, Squarepusher went on to release a number of albums building off of his original ideas. More refined and complex rhythms, improved bass-playing, and a host of new influences characterized his work. For instance, with tracks like "Tommib" (which appeared in the Lost in Translation soundtrack), "Iambic 5 Poetry", "Iambic 9 Poetry", and "Beep Street", released between 1997 and 2004, he explored melancholic melodies and chord structures that were not present in his frenetic early work. With tracks like "Do You Know Squarepusher?" and "My Red Hot Car", he made his sound somehow accessible. Though the tracks feature the same cut-up break-beats and rhythms, and something new: highly manipulated vocals, the tracks sound somehow like you could hear them on the radio.
In 1998, Squarepusher took an unexpected turn with his album Music Is Rotted One Note. Unlike his previous material, the album was recorded almost completely with live instruments, played by Jenkinson. The album lies somewhere between jazz, dub, and electro-acoustic music and it has served as a milestone in both electronic music and jazz.
Squarepusher's later material simply, as mentioned previously, builds on itself. There is a clear progression in his production talent, artistic ability, and vision. 2004's "Ultravisitor" marks a near perfection of the "mind-fuck" concept. The track "Menelec" combines unparalleled break-beat chopping with numbing electronic textures and a production styles that makes the track feel less like a series of individual tracks blended together and more like a sort of musical organism creating music in its normal, yet incredibly complex, bodily functions. The album also utilizes an unusual amount of live material. Listening from beginning to end, the album appears to be a seamless live show, complete with crowd noise, which it very well may have been.
Following the Ultravisitor release, Squarepusher seems to "gone back to his roots" somewhat. After mastering his youthful notions in Ultravisitor, he began to focus less on innovating and more on writing enjoyable songs. The Guardian said about his new album, Hello everything: "This new CD may divide his fan...as some prefer his material to sound more like a drum kit and a bag of cats being kicked down a flight of stairs." Jenkinson agrees, stating in an interview that the album was essentially about having fun.
One of the most fascinating things about Squarepusher is the respect he receives from the musical community. Flea, the worshipped bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers said recently: "I am listening to Squarepusher, he is the best electric bass player on the earth, he is pushing the instrument the farthest he is the best". In a video interview on Squarepusher's website, Andre 3000 of Outkast, a popular hip-hop group is shown endorsing him, and the clip includes a section of a subsequent interview with Thom Yorke of the Radiohead in which he is asked why he agreed to be on the show. Thom Yorke replies that he saw Squarepusher on the show, so if Squarepusher did it, he was going to. On top of this, it seems that anybody who plays bass or listens to modern music extensively knows and loves Squarepusher, regardless of their musical tastes. Squarepusher is perhaps one of the most respected and well known musicians in music today, yet he is completely absent from the popular music radar. | |
Comments
06/21/07
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astroid
nice one. you managed to write this paper with some distance and with a minimum of idm necro bjs.
06/21/07
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nagrom
what in the world is an idm necro bj?
06/21/07
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astroid
music history always has a bit of necrophilia in it.
06/21/07
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astroid
sorry, i should be permabanned. it really was a nice paper. i didn't know a lot of that stuff
06/21/07
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energygiant
lllllllllllllllllooolllllllllllllllllll
06/21/07
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bitbare
no mention of his mentoring of little brother c-fax acid crew? i did a paper on him back in 2000 it was recieved buy blank stares. then i palyed a selection from "music rotted notes" they were blown away buy the jazz like style of elctronic music they had never known existed. college has some small perks
06/21/07
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hecanjog
sweet - i wrote a similar paper on the specials for my high school music theory class, lol
06/21/07
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hecanjog
yours is better tho
06/22/07
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mixedtape
The Specials! dope. you go rude boy
06/22/07
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nagrom
Yo, The Specials are dope! Thanks for the tip.
06/22/07
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prugelknaben
great paper. can my daughter steal it and use it in school?
06/22/07
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Roshi
if you like the specials, I would also recommend the 1st English Beat album...still one of my faves after all of these years
06/22/07
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tantan
Sweet!
I once turned a term project on Joyce's Ulysses into an analysis of "Love's Secret Domain" by Coil, and wrote a song to accompany it. Most fun I've ever had in school.
06/22/07
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monkvolcano
nice pape..
but can't help but laugh at flea saying jenkinson is 'the best electric bass player on earth'
06/22/07
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nagrom
if you like the specials, I would also recommend the 1st English Beat album...still one of my faves after all of these years
I've got one of their albums on vinyl... not so in to it, but I'll take another look.
I really like the Specials' song "Gangsters", but the version they have on iTunes sucks (in comparison to the version on YouTube). That song is the shit. I'm disappointed. I want it. I want it bad.
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