Squarepusher - 'Ultravisitor' (Warp)
5/5
By: Toby L
The mystifying, prolonged sound of robots copulating, Squarepusher's steely, frosty atmospherics merge with Miles Davis jazz-templates and absorbing new, heady dimensions in dance to form the ultimate head-trip of our age. Or, at least 2004.
So, 'Ultravisitor' - what hazards ye different from the rest of the H Kirk's, Autechre's, Four Tet's and Boards Of Canada's out there? Namely, an amalgamation of said contemporaries, and a sprinkling of soul amidst the digitised polar ice-caps of the immaculate, slick production. So whilst the opening title-track underlines a cunning knack to distort, contort and slaughter complex time-signatures and rattling, growling machine-disharmony, 'I Fulcrum' is a paced, piano-strewn pulpit of self-reverence, skipping as it does from off-kilter, blissed-out electronica to uplifting degrees of stark instrumental isolation.
'Iambic 9 Poetry' is some of the smooth depth and stoned sensations that The Neptunes most likely warmed to when first enthusing of Squarepusher, with its clattering drums and soaring, hovering waves of lush synth-orchestration, while 'Andrei' is merely medieval folk-like, lilting guitars with a mild Spanish twist. Yes, weighty variation is Squarepusher aka solo-wonder Tom Jenkinson's most favourable, enviable trait; not content on even the previous, by the time we hit the woozy paranoia of '50 Cycles', we're in the terrain of hip-hop and beefy rhymes (at least we presume they are - it's hard to tell when they're wilfully muddied under a plethora of creeping atmospherics and haunting scrape-y noises).
Then, as it spirals into dubby, drum 'n' bass/hardcore pastures ('Menelec'), swerves into the farty funk-jazz live-massacre of 'C-Town Smash', enters the terrifying electro-disruption of 'Steinbolt', peaks the noise-atrocity in the guise of 'An Arched Pathway' and might as well be soundtracking a horror-film in 'Telluric Place', it's clear that the confines of Squarepusher are as stretched as his deranged, Warped mind.
Climaxing in the soothing church-organ of 'Circlewave', percussive wilderness of 'Terra-Sync', and movingly straightforward, lullaby-like 'Tommib Help Buss' - let alone the enchanting 'Every Day I Love', this record is more enlightenment than damnation than once pre-determined. As cataclysmically textured and complex as the universe we're a part of, these are wild mood-swings in full, visceral force, and modern soul with brains. Long may Jenkinson not so much as Push, but completely demolish and corrode convention beyond all feasible recognition.
Artists in this article: Squarepusher
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