Squarepusher

If I go see him play live is it just gonna be him hitting play and then noodling on a bass

there's a rad light show apparently

i have always been super-into "my sound"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzoFHatryJQ

yeah that one's excellent. squarepusher rarely does the chilled/pretty jazz thing but it's something he's really great at.

new one seems super maximal and overdriven, with barely a deep breath in sight

I'm enjoying the new one. Very much continuing in a similar vein to the last one, unusually for him.

Just saw him with Shobaleader One in SF. Was expecting all Shobaleader songs with Tommy J going off and maybe a Squarepusher track as fan service, but instead it was an all Squarepusher cover set with them playing classics from almost every album from 1996-2007. I think they finally dropped a Shobaleader song for the encore. If you get a chance, check this show out! Some tracks I recall hearing:

Cooper's World - Hard Normal Daddy (opened the show)
Squarepusher Theme - Feed Me Weird Things
Iambic 5 Poetry - Budakhan Mindphone
Don't Go Plastic - Music Is Rotted One Note
A Journey To Reedham (7am mix) - Big Loada
Tetrasync - Ultravisitor
Hello Meow - Hello Everything

Of all the times I've seen him live (this was the 5th now) this had to be the most satisfying from a fan service perspective. And the drummer was NUTS. Incredible. RDJ in Houston? Squarepusher jamming his classics with a full band? What a time to be alive.

that sounds absolutely awesome, and exactly the sort of thing I have been wishing him to do for like, a decade now. this vid confirms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VypU8zojFsY

hopefully he releases a live disc, cuz damn

I decided to play Hard Normal Daddy after years of skipping over it in favor of other things and it is the best decision I've made in a long time.

you gotta hear his live band play the tracks it's incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VypU8zojFsY

Dude seriously has one of the most detailed musician pages on Wikipedia I've ever seen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squarepusher

holy shit that video

the Journey to Reedham video is insane as well

https://youtu.be/IXtQDsf4gJA

"Wind down with CBeebies Daydreams, an hour-long journey that focuses on the finer details of the world to help you relax. Voiced by Olivia Colman and music by Tom Jenkinson."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p062glb7/daydreams-cbeebies-wind-down

New album coming in January: Be Up a Hello

https://pitchfork.com/news/squarepusher-announces-first-album-in-5-years-shares-new-song-listen/

Squarepusher “returned to using a bewildering array of vintage analog and digital hardware, the same equipment that first helped him develop his sound in the early ’90s.”

The Fracture Remix of Vortrack is quite nice, and clearly has the old school hardware vibe he's going for. Album version is much weirder and has an interesting Aphex vibe. 90's instrumentation with modern side chaining. Not at all like the remix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ke5hp-p3E

yeah I'd swear the album version of this was Aphex, at least until around the 3:30 mark when the percussion starts really going haywire

lots of discussion on my FB about whether the Fracture remix is by Fracture or not... bit confused.

Discogs says it is... but the Pitchfork write up implies it's TJ? Also confused. Tbf he's used random remix names in the past, like on Big Loada

Another one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtSJA_U4W1U

seems to be getting very good reviews has anyone heard it yet

No but a friend of mine who doesn't normally like Squarepusher told me he really likes it.

It sounds like '90s Squarepusher.

listening now and it's really nice and chunky and satisfying. agree, it's the closest thing to Hard Normal Daddy he's done in a while and while being bonkers, it's a lot more accessible - not as much jazzy experiments, more burbling drill'n'bass in a dustbin

i think this might be one of his most enjoyable albums for decades. that said, I don't know if (like almost all his albums since the mid-2000s) I'll listen to it once, enjoy it, and then feel weirdly guilty for never digging it out again

Not enough robots IMHO. "Nervelevers" and "80 Ondula" are the keepers.

lol at opening the record with pachelbel's canon

Feels like a merge between the song structure and musical styles he refined with Hello Everything and Ufabulum combined with his old school gear and editing circa HND. Not sure it will have the staying power of those aforementioned releases, but it's definitely a solid album

I felt like I lost track of Squarepusher c Ultravisitor, which felt really messy and sprawling to me at the time, even for him. Never managed to get back on the Squarepusher train despite probably having heard every album since. But I do remember Hello Everything being good

Why are Tommib and Beep Street his most listened-to tracks on Spotify? Strange...

Maybe Tommib is on a bunch of ambient playlists, plus it's short, but Beep Street never struck me as a SP highlight to be standing over Red Hot Car and Iambic 5 Poetry...

I'm taking a worldwind tour of his discography now.
each album has its own vague overall vibe.
But each one also suffers from wild oscillationgs between tear-out drill'n'bass rave, abstruse avant-jazztronica and the odd ambient or acoustic tune which would otherwise be considered quite pretty.
It's Druqks syndrome all over again - the feeling of listening to three or four albums on shuffle rather than a consolidated whole.
And while that tension can sometimes works, more often than not it's a jarring, implacable listen that never really settles into a groove.
'Hello Everything' starts with a bunch of fun upbeat bangers but halfway through the album it suddenly switches to three consecutive tracks of quiet, contemplative ambient jazz.
This is all very well, but for me as a listener I'm rarely in the mood to be buffeted around in this way.
It's nice that he's showing off his musical range, but it leaves me wondering how wide that range is, when he's released so many albums now that swing from what is ultimately two essential styles.
Personally I'd much rather he released records like 'Music Is Rotted One Note', which was more focused on his jazz/experimental sound and kept the ravey stuff for other releases rather than trying to cram everything into one claustrophobic assortment box. It would let his range express itself more.

one recent-ish record of his I really dug was Just a Souvenir, in which he seemed to force himself to cut the unnecessarily abrasive & doodly stuff and just rock out. I think his audience at large didn't like it but I found it kinda charming.

Listening to the new one after enjoying his RA Exchange interview. It's really good, even though it sounds more like a video game soundtrack than anything else. There's usually a backbeat or a riff that keeps things from going off the rails entirely into squelchy madness.

Just A Souvenir is one of his best

New album continues my personal theory that you could make a “best of squarepusher” album consisting of only the first full-length track on each of his albums/EPs/singles and it would be comprehensive.

You would miss 'Don't Go Plastic', 'Beep Street' and 'UFOs Over Leytonstone' at least.

Just looking at Squarpusher LPs on wiki, hoo boy that Pitchfork review of Go Plastic is one of the wrongest things I have ever read.

returning to stuff I haven't really played since SOY (start of year), forgot how awesome Be Up A Hello is

so many good records (including this one) came out before covid and it literally feels like 2 years ago

yeah thought the same about Dan Deacon's new album, I was like no way did this come out in 2020

Feed Me Weird Things 25th anniversary edition coming out June 4th!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OySHlQzk8bY

enjoyable