Yesterday, I heard CJ Bolland's classic-to-me "Sugar Is Sweeter" on the Joe Shockley Podcast after, as Joe put it, it regifted itself to him on one of those wonderful shuffled playlists. I don't know how many years it's been since I heard the track, but it's definitely more than one, and probably closer to two or three or four. So as I piled mp3 backups to rip and load onto my Amazon Cloud, the site of Squarepusher on a playlist caught my eye.
Like "Sugar Is Sweeter," "Come On My Selector" is one of those tracks that was first seen by my eyes on an overpriced import CD and later on a psychotic video on AMP on MTV. It's not just the freaky Japanese girl in the video killing people that does it for me, though that helps, it's the fastest beats I'm pretty sure I'd heard to that point, the squelching bass lines, the actual bass lines, and the way it just twists and gets crazier. From "let the bass kick" to the climax after "come to fucking daddy" and gradual drop off end of the track, with a steadily tranquil bassline as it's guide, it's a mind fuck.
Every track on Big Loada, the stateside full length this comes on, is like this and crazy. What's really amazing is that Squarepusher, or Tom Jenkinson as his mother calls him, is a hugely talented bassist who, when he got several albums of what came to be called drill 'n' bass (sometimes the beats sound like drills, let's be honest here), turned to revolutionary jazz. Eventually, he combined the two and started triggering all his d'n'b samples through a bass. Yeah, revolutionary. I know.
While Aphex Twin wants you to actually go insane, and Luke Vibert wants you to get stoned and follow a groove, I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that Squarepusher was just looking for listeners to dance as though they're having a seizure. Frankly, it's the best seizure EVER.
(If you're not convinced, here's "Problem Child" from the same album.)
Buy Big Loada from Shockhound.
Or, just check out the entire Squarepusher discography. They're all good.
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