All of the recordings here were made in one take, with no edits. Damogen Furies is also a response to performance. Squarepusher revelled in the long run of shows that followed the release of Ufabulum, and the robustness and forthrightness of this album is testament to that.
Ufabulum was a record born very much of the studio, made using equipment that was cumbersome. Such a static setup made it difficult for Squarepusher to work while on the road. Inspiration can be bounded by time and place, and he wanted the opportunity to seize that inspiration when it happened. For he has ensured that the system he has spent so many years developing can be easily transported, allowing him to work while travelling but also offering the opportunity for the new live show to constantly morph.
The new live set has the capacity for change built in, questioning the position of the recorded artefact as the definitive expression of a piece of music.
This new setup ensures that this is perhaps his most immediate record, transposing the power of his performance practice while also anticipating his new live show. The time between Ufabulum and Damogen Furies was not only taken up with touring.
At the other end of the spectrum, he has recently completed a run of shows in which Ufabulum was reimagined for an orchestra, led by conductor Charles Hazelwood. User Control Panel Log out. Forums Posts Latest Posts. View More. Recent Blog Posts. Recent Photos. View More Photo Galleries. Unread PMs. Forum Themes Mobile Progressive.
The above are strong words from the former Chelmsford man, and he's the first to admit that it doesn't necessarily make for the most stable and financially lucrative career path. It was horrible, because when you play with a drummer or a band the tempos will modulate, and unless you program that ebb and flow or set up an algorithm to emulate it, the electronics will just plough ahead, and won't listen to you.
It was so hideous, so alien that I was asking myself why I was doing it, but eventually I found that when I could pull it off, it was really compelling. I set about different ways of combining the two, and would often play something quite harmonious on the bass and create electronic parts that would combat and almost try to contradict this.
In my mind I was setting up a dialogue in which each instrument would question the other to the point of being a danger, perhaps even an enemy of the other. You can do that in a very token way, and people have sometimes turned this juxtaposition into an incongruity, to the point of musical comedy. Most of these manifestations are tacky and pretty unfunny and therefore many people rule the juxtaposition approach out as a basis for composition. But I think that if that kind of juxtaposition is done intelligently, it can be incredibly informative and lead one to reassess one's instruments.
He recalls: "I made 'Journey To Reedham' in , and I remember the first time I played it during a rave: the crowd went bananas! I concluded from that kind of experience that if you have a knack for writing catchy melodies you can immediately appeal to people. I appear to have that knack, and I could go into the studio now and take an hour to create another barnstorming rave track that everyone will love.
But certainly at the time I felt that that was too easy. It appeared that an overtly catchy melody line allows a piece of music to communicate with people, and I started to experiment to see whether, if I took that melody line away, I could get the other instrument to make up for the lack of overt melody. Could I make bass lines that were catchy? Is it possible to make beats that are catchy?
Are there other ways than overt melodies to make people latch onto a track in an instantaneous way? So in a way I was doing research. On Go Plastic, I approached the question from the angle of digital processing, and wondered whether there was a way of making that so visceral, so aggressive, so exciting, of injecting so much adrenaline into the music that it was possible to do away with melody.
Could the music still communicate, and if not in the same way, could it at least offer a parallel way of doing things? Eventually, Jenkinson came to the conclusion that there was no definitive answer to his question.
It's a development that echoes the development of 20th Century classical music, though Jenkinson admits that "I don't think my knowledge of Western classical music at that time was sufficient to know that I was making a parallel transition. People use Stockhausen in electronic dance music, and someone like Tod Dockstader, who was totally obscure, is now a name that people in certain circles are aware of.
So all that difficult music has become part of a palette that people dip into. As for my own development, at some stage I started getting the impression that my music was beginning to be seen as an academic effort and was increasingly appropriated by musical academia. That was a compliment, and it reflected my commitment to make what, at least at the time, I felt were bold experimental moves in electronic music. Basically I was beginning to stare up my own ass. Plus there was again the danger of preaching only to the converted.
So I wanted to shake things up and make music in a more spontaneous, almost flippant way, and less like I was in a laboratory. Jenkinson's development is not quite as linear as his words here suggest. The more recent general direction of Jenkinson's music towards more immediacy, fun and spontaneity and away from wilful contrariness is nonetheless obvious, beginning with Ultravisitor, which swung wildly from one extreme to another, and culminating last year in Shobaleader One and d'Demonstrator, much of which sounds like a direct extension of 'My Red Hot Car'.
Jenkinson: "The track '50 Cycles' on Ultravisitor is a monster that took me a month to make. I used the Vegas software, made by Sonic Foundry at the time, to assemble literally thousands of edited pieces of audio, and it became something of monstrous complexity. Then the next day it was like: 'I can't stand this any more, I need something simple, something enriching.
That's how the acoustic guitar track 'Andrei' came about. On that album, the dialogue between these two directions started to get really tense. Since the album after that, Hello Everything, I've been making music that's been more accessible, more joyous, and less hard work.
There certainly is a more immediately melodic thread running through Hello Everything, Just A Souvenir and d'Demonstrator, but that's not to say that there's not much on these three albums that isn't weird and pretty far out by most people's standards. All these albums, as well as Go Plastic and Do You Know Squarepusher were recorded at the Essex location Jenkinson moved to in , after living in London for over a decade.
Ten years on, Jenkinson is still in the same rural location, where he spends as much of his time programming his beloved Eventide Orville box in a his slightly dilapidated living room, complete with what looks like an old '80s stereo tower as his only playback system.
Drummer Alex Thomas's kit is temporarily resident in Jenkinson's live room. Both rooms are linked by a corridor that's full with flightcases and the computing bits for the Euphonix as well as a Lexicon L reverb. The Euphonix comes as a bit of a surprise, as it is a piece of kit that ticks all the wrong boxes, from Jenkinson's point of view at least, in that it's shiny and expensive and most likely was not bought at a jumble sale. It's a ragtag collection of stuff, and there's no discernible overall 'vintage' rationale behind the collection as a whole.
The stereo input stages incorporate a soft-clip circuit, high shelving EQ and spring selectors that send the input to a given pair of springs. PCM is fine. Bach is not really particularly dependent on dynamics. There are certain things that are dependent on the relationship between pitches, but that information can come through on low-quality reproductions. When I started listening to music, I was listening to AM radio and then I was recording on cassette tapes, and obviously the fidelity available on a quality cassette was never that good.
But for me, I still have to look forward, and I do see high resolution ultimately as icing on the cake. The icing is the music, and the cake is a good composition, you know? I do know, and now my ears are hungry. These days, the concept of putting out full albums has lost its luster in some circles. Like I said, I started out making a load of stuff to go and play live. The album idea came from other people when I played it for friends I work with or people from the label, and so forth.
The novelty of the concept of releasing a record is, sadly, long gone for me. If I feel the music merits it, then I will do it. The listener, through the ways that they access music these days, is very much more empowered. They can construct their own album, if they like. And there it is — people go for what they want to hear. That, for me, principally governs the concept for the way I put an album together.
I find the hedonistic, basically cherry-picking attitudes towards records will disallow those kind of experiences.
Anyone who knows Trout Mask Replica has had to persevere with it. If you persevere with it, you get somewhere.
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