Feed Me Weird Things album cover
Feed Me Weird Things

Squarepusher

1996
Rephlex

The pretext for Tom Jenkinson, or at least what walked before him, was Aphex Twin’s programming and the mad rush of drum and bass. If Aphex has one main heir, it’s Jenkinson, who brought to the foreground what all the mechanical skill was implying. As a live bassist, Jenkinson filled in the blanks: What if all this machine music had a live counterpart? And of course, it already had, and that was called jazz fusion. So Feed Me is Jaco over Amen breaks and gnarly MIDI sizzling, much of it too fast for humans to track, though Jenkinson keeps up on bass even when it seems impossible. It’s like one big hymn to the potential of human flow and machine curves. Feed Me is often showy and virtuosic to the point of irritation, which does not stop it from being luscious and fully formed. Squarepusher’s debut works, as a mood and a manifesto. Hyperactive crayon black brilliance, bristling with life and busting with bravado. He would appreciate the corny alliteration.

Sasha Frere-Jones

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