The Massive are Squarepusher fans of long standing, that is, ever
since we first heard the frenetic, bleepy, self-destructing drum-and-bass
tracks of "Hard Normal Daddy" seven years ago while being rocketed across
the Japanese countryside on a speeding bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto.
Since then we've subscribed to the promise of more and even better music
from Squarepusher.
"Ultravisitor," Squarepusher's ninth (or seventh, by some people's tally)
disc is a good ride, but not one without some potholes and speed bumps along
the road. The disc verges on greatness, but the overall impression is that
as a collection the album at times feels like a hit-and-miss affair.
Like many artists exploring and exploiting every nook and cranny and pathway of their
musical palette to find new challenges, solve new musical conundrums and erase boredom,
Squarepusher (otherwise known as an English bloke named Tom Jenkinson) keeps fiddling and
noodling and looking for some new underdeveloped territory by his mind and Fender-Rhodes-bass-plucking / knob-twiddling / sequence-programming / drum-playing hands.
Right out of the starting gate comes the album-titled first track, "Ultravisitor," a track straight out of the
Squarepusher playbook with the signature high-speed, drum-and-bass patter and blips and bleats and breaks
and organ riffs all rolling out ahead of themsleves and on top and pricking up our ears again with
the derailed collage of random-like noise and samples stitched together with barbed wire and velvet.
We are transported to heaven.
This is hardly new ground for Squarepusher, but tracks like this and "Menelec" and "Steinbolt" still have the
atomic power to riddle our fibers with excitement and surprise and keep us guessing in a way that
jolts the synapses (ideally staving off future risks of developing Alzheimer's disease in the process).
Despite this, "Ultravisitor" is a strange, mixed blessing. On the one hand, the disc puts Jenkinson's
stamp on the proceedings, an alternating combination of tracks with his usual extraordinarily frenetic,
fragmented and alienated drum-and-bass tracks and his jazz-bass-fusion-like forays that dive into
long prog-rock-ish interludes, extended bass solos and meanderings that otherwise come off as plain instrumental
wanking. "C-Town Smash" and "An Arched Parkway" take this ball and run it past the goal posts out of the stadium.
It's during tracks like these and parts of the second tune, "I Fulcrum," that we can't
help but think of a scene in the 1980's Rob Reiner mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap," in which the aging,
irrelevant dinosaur British rock group, Spinal Tap, loses its lead guitarist, who runs out on the group
in a huff just before a concert and in doing so strips his bandmates of performing 99% of their material.
But the fans are waiting and the show must go on, so the Tap copes by staging a performance not of their string
of now-nostalgic rock hits from the '70's, but rather an obscure and best-forgotten full album's worth of instrumental jazz-prog-rock
centered around long bass solos.
This is what we were thinking half-way through "Ultravisitor."
Or to put it another way, after a dozen listens, we pushed the skip button on these tracks
time after time, though, eventually, curiosity got the better of us and we went back to listen to them again.
But then we come to mysterious track No. 12, "Circlewave," wherein we get a taste of something
we've never heard before from Squarepusher and something we've never heard exactly this
way from any arist.
The track is a disorderly layer of gentle drums, like a spastic percussionist with a serious timing problem
singlemindedly and quickly struggling to to rescue a basic beat from the sonic rubble until that magical instant
when it breathes to life quietly and slowly and the track is angelically resolved with the arrival of a slow
somber, funereal organ melody that builds subtly to the heavens and sounds as if it
could be at home in some vast European cathedral.
At the tail end of Ultravistor we also get the beautiful "Tommib Help Buss," the title of which suggests
something in common with a Squarepusher track called "Tommib" on the "Lost in
Translation" film soundtrack. But this is not seem the case. The tracks are of the same mood, but sound different and are painted
with different shades.
The rest of "Ultravisitor" falls predictably into place at points in between the slow-and-quiet and the speedy-and-chaotic,
with the exception of the
fourth track, "Andrei," which has a warm and gentle classical Spanish guitar buoying the tune in sharp contrast
to the rest of "Ultravisitor."
"Andrei" is more like what you'd hear in a ridiculously expensive
boutique selling high-end, but low-key-looking, home furnishings hand-built by the Dutch furniture designers
who dreamed them up. Soundtrack music for the Wallpaper set's consumer experience. But damn, it's beautiful.
Hearing it makes you want to quit your day job and fly off to the Costa de Sol and spend the rest of
eternity idling romantically in front of dreamy sunsets.
Part of what sets "Ultravisitor" apart is its pseudo-live-recording, with audience whoops and cheers imported
into the mix when the music quiets or has just rounded a difficult corner.
And as most live recordings go (whether real of fake), it has that "live" sound, where
the audio alternates between being just a little too tinny and just a little too muddy to just
plain sounding like your're listening to "Ultravisitor" off to the side in a big cavern, which in a virtual sense you are
and in a real sense is also the whole point. We rarely get to hear this kind of music in this way.
Leave it to Jenkinson to keep us guessing. Listeners until now unfamiliar with the Squarepusher ouevre
may shake their heads in confusion to "Ultravisitor." Squarepusher's music evokes largely
love or hate responses. While it may be a mixed bag for some, on balance this disc ranks up among
the best, most provoking Squarepusher work yet.
--Adrian "Pushsquarer" Tharani
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RELATED LINKS
+ Warp Records Website
+ Squarepusher Minisite at Warp Records
+ Squarepusher Discography [Discogs.com]
+ Musicplayer Forum Discussion on Squarepusher
+ Perfect Sound Forever's 1999 Squarepusher Interview
+ Squarepusher "Go Plastic" Audio Streams [Warp Records]
+
Pitchfork's "Ultravistor" Review [Pitchfork Media]
+ The Guardian's "Ultravisitor" Reviewed [Guardian Unlimited]
+
Squarepusher Discussion Board [Gnoosic]
