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Music

Squarepusher - 'Ufabulum'

It's like my brain is shooting beams of pure alpha wave energy in an attempt to secure world peace by astral projection, maaaaan....

SQUAREPUSHER
Ufabulum

Warp, 2012

  • Favorite:

    "4001"

  • FLAVORS:

    MDMA, Ice Cream Cake

RATING:

TRACK LIST:

  • 4001
  • Unreal Square
  • Stadium Ice
  • Energy Wizard
  • Red in Blue
  • The Metallurgist
  • Drax 2
  • Dark Steering
  • 303 Scopem Hard
  • Ecstatic Shock

This is an actual photo I took last Thursday of what I look like when I listen to Squarepusher.

As you can see, my entire head resolves itself, from its present boisterous ugliness, into a smooth, rather featureless any-man face. Instead of 'sploding around at random, all my neurons line up in ordered pulses, firing perfect parabolas of blue light across my mindspace. Thoughts that had been difficult, messy constellations of half-formed ideas become easy vector equations. Emotions retreat from being behavior-interfering tokens of my brutish animal nature, into pure, Platonic ideals of emotions that I am free to consider from the abstract height of rational intellect--as though I were picking up interestingly-made chess pieces and turning them over for signs of craftsmanship.

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That is the power of the intellect that Tom Jenkinson possesses. He has always been--will always be--the thinking man's Aphex Twin.

And, consequently, I like it best of all when he is at his most abstract--his most electronic. I've never been one hundred percent about his attempts to cross jazz over into his electronica; I get my jazz from my jazz people. Of course, many people hold the exact opposite view. Really, what are those people on?

So after the more lived-in adventures of Just A Souvenir, and the really-pushing-it-now slapfunkeries of Solo Electric Bass 1, it's great to see him get back to Techno Town full-time. Ufabulum is Squarepusher's stab at a stabby-synth rave album. Its creator has been canny enough to make it not at rave pace, but to realise that glitchtronica in itself already simulates the true pace of a brain on rave-drugs: slowed-down, enveloping you in its big synthy mush, yet simultaneously sped-up and hyper-alert. Ten years since his commercial peak, he's still hitting new highs. As you can see from the photo of me below, the opening track "4001" is so good, it has caused beams of pure alpha wave energy to radiate from my lobes in a spontaneous attempt to secure world peace by astral projection.

Want a piece of that alpha energy? Our homies at The Creators Project captured this amazing live Squarepusher performance, one of Jenkinson's first shows in the US in the past 15 years.