Squarepusher - Music Is Rotted One Note

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Warp Records, 1998



The third installment in Squarepusher's career delivers a clever, haunting musical feeling that is sleek and subtle enough to conceal itself partly for time to time, though it's presence remains pretty much evident during the record, armed with the eventually fulfilled promise of particular peek moments where it's creator offers temporal free spaces for this everpresent sensation, a couple of more profound packs of insights unto the cunning "dark of it".

This delicate component hardly, if ever vanishes fully during the record, taking the coherent position of a mood-connection, elegantly, globally affecting the overall experience. As a massively yet cunningly haunted journey, Jenkinson's 1998 effort is an ideal choice to evoke a musical space that delivers integrity and organic connection throughout the tracks.

The record runs 50 minutes flat, with 14 tracks to create the whole buildup of the release. The opening song Chunk - S is the decoy here, a cute, easygoing jazz-funk piece to make you believe that you are into a relaxing joyride with all the happymood switches set all the way to the right.

Think again, baby, and Don't Go Plastic, as Squarepusher shows off his impressive analogue drum skills in this second track, simultaneously evoking the haunted component that pretty much chooses to stay for the rest of the audio time, sometimes dominating, though most of the time offering the delicate "metathreat" approach of:

Hey, I could come out to reign over stuff again at any time now, you know!

Quite many of shorter, longer atmospheric effect sequences emphasize this promising perspective, the compositions themselves flowing almost unnoticeably unto their actual fabric, though when they do, the trademark haunting feel of the record wisely chooses to melt into the background, eager though to delicately assault your ears soon 'nuff again.

One of my personal favorites on this record is the seventh track, called Circular Flexing. This is a total WOW! for me, generally it feels and hears out as a very decent motion picture music piece in which the haunting feel is free to reign in it's puzzling, fascinating totality for the whole of the track, but the top of it all is the feature presentation of who I call "The marine", a person speaking in your average "badass marine" register, though of his sentences, not a word you will make out, I assure you. Yet you hear the tonality and his calm, factual mood clearly, resulting in a special audible experience of mentally witnessing a marine to deliver his final report after ending up on this distant,(?) improbable (?) planet/place the musical fabric evokes. A truly nice piece. It is hard to tell if the marine is synth-generated or a real person, but I guess it will remain a secret between God and Tom Jenkison. Should add the synth or the real person yet to the latter two, no doubt.

The aforementioned track also serves as a pivot point of the record, since the consecutive, gentle chillout track My Sound makes a comfy room for a crazy-ass freejazz tune to follow up, a piece ready to relentlessly entertain our now-welcomed trademark guide and companion, the haunted feel, which this time can't help but join in the fray, making somewhat of a very interesting and welcomed audio-joke of himself, finding a temporal peace and a funny function in this rampant, yet caressing freejazz buildup.

The curios title to mark the track Theme From Vertical Hold signifies the beginning of this nice section, where Squarepusher skillfully assaults the hihats via either probably more than 3 arms or a crazy-ass effect processor, the drums are radical and cunning enough to catchy, re-ouccuring melodies to join in. After a while, the haunting feel seems to get fed up with all this, though, presenting itself in an astonishingly powerful manner in the painfully short follow-up track, Ruin. The tortured agony of a syntsound we witness here, along with the superdark, hypermassive background synths to join us in our scrutinizing process. The results are so massively weird and shocking on the audible registers that Squarepusher himself might have got somewhat frightened of it, so he chooses to briefly wrap this short effect showdown up, commanding the haunting feel to take quite a couple of steps backward off it's victim it was torturing. Genuinely original and significant moments, without doubts.

Shin Triad is of special note, as well, partly because of the synth signal Jenkinson tricks you with at 0:20. Try to sleep listening to the record, and watch what happens when you reach this particular portion, will be funny, Tom and I promise you that. Other reason one must account on this track is a short experimental sequence, where a dude - maybe Squarepusher himself? - signs/scats some funny/silly melodies away, yet the signal goes into some hyperradical effect processors, resulting in some similarly funny monstersound you hear, characterized by the supporting presence of an equally modified bass synth. The audible experience is such as you would have ended up between little funny monster creatures, having one of the biggest party of their lives with massive, clumsy, bigger monsters. Another short, yet very entertaining sound experiment by the Squarepusher Thing.

Music is Rotted One Note cleary remains a significant musical shipment of Jenkinson's career, blending his quite mature, subtly presented analogue drum skills with the experimental electronic warfare he is equally skilled and relentless at. Melodies on this record tend to comfort with the haunting feel that is dominating the release with either dainty fingers or an iron fist - a deliverance that is very easy and very interesting to listen to, and even easier to recommend for all with opened up ears.

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