A decade or so ago, Tom Jenkinson-- the disheveled mastermind behind jazz-cum-drum-and-glitch mishmash Squarepusher-- described his music-making process as a sort of technological vision quest, with the end product "a souvenir of your time in this psychic space." Looks like it's a sentiment that he's taken with him. Over the course of 11 albums, he's been embroiled in some sort of existential conundrum, if not crisis, as he's attempted to reconcile a background in formal jazz with the manic possibilities afforded by sequencing and sound manipulation. A veritable thesaurus of musical experimentation, Jenkinson has pushed a spitfire chorus of fully formed studies in blending fusion with breakbeats, acid with funk. But whether this litany is meant to be enjoyed or simply admired is up for debate. It's true that his work (and of course his bass and drumming virtuosity) is due respect, but the intersection of his hardcore appreciators (tweaked tech-heads and staid jazz appreciators) might just as soon stroke their chins as develop emotional reactions to it.
Just a Souvenir could just bridge Jenkinson's longtime appreciation gap. Heck, it's just about the Squarepusher equivalent to Sgt. Pepper's. Souvenir is ostensibly a concept album, complete with a cockamamie yarn Jenkinson has spun about its woozily constructed device: "a daydream about watching a crazy, beautiful rock band play an ultra-gig" centered around a giant neon coat-hanger. Into his vision enter guitars that can manipulate space-time, Eskimos, chainsaws, and Cro-Magnons. At the conclusion, Jenkinson laments that his memory of the scene is his only souvenir-- add a dash of humility, and you've got a title! And although it's 2004's Ultravisitor, with its ever-present crowd samples, that sounds like a live album, Souvenir leaves distinct impressions of an otherworldly rock spectacle.
True to concept, the record as a whole sounds more organic than any Squarepusher release dating back, perhaps, to Music Is Rotted One Note-- excepting Souvenir's obvious counterexample in "A Real Woman", whose vocoded robot narrator bemoans its cluelessness in the ways of the human female. Jenkinson announces his newfound humanity right off the bat with opener "Star Time 2", which sedately re-imagines the track "Coopers World" that opened his seminal Hard Normal Daddy. The drill-and-bass salvos that slashed across "Cooper" and many of Jenkinson's canvases of old have been toned down or eradicated-- only minimal echoes of the signature Amen Break beat show up, with comparatively little sequenced percussion remaining. Tom still wails on his bass, capably delivering a master class in funky fills, but its delivery through the riffy, frenetic math-punk of "Delta-V" and "Planet Gear" is most surprising. By recasting his relentless, aggressive textures into rock, he's breathed a curious new life into them, imbuing a sort of alien quality to what in less capable hands could have turned out as reruns of someone else's garage rock or funk-punk.
As the languid classical guitar that dots the album brings it to a close, it hits that this 44-minute opus is perhaps more inviting, and more melodic, than anything Jenkinson has done in a long time. It's certainly an easier listen than 80 minutes of Ultravisitor or an hour of Hello Everything. Souvenir, comparatively, is a demure beast of wistful robot voices framing jazz improvisation, alien rock jams evoking the aging belligerence of breakbeats, and pastoral drone backdrops adorned by jerky guitar ballads. But Souvenir isn't just an outlet for nonfans to "get" Squarepusher. By abstractly distilling the principles that guide Squarepusher, the record arrives readymade for the chin-stroking die-hards out there to endlessly theorize about the connection between the music maker, the music, and his/its audience. If indeed music is the only souvenir gained from these trips to the unknown, then this disheveled spitfire, once lost in his little world of glitches and jazz scales, might have unearthed this particular bauble on the journey to meet the rest of us halfway.
Squarepusher:
Just a Souvenir
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