Squarepusher announces new album ‘Kammerkonzert’ + releases new single ‘k2 central’.

Mar 2

‘kammerkonzert’ appears on April 10th via warp records. The new single ‘k2 central’ is available here

Tom Jenkinson, aka Squarepusher, the singular hardcore rave / electronic producer, experimental musician and creator of futuristic forms of fusion, has a three-decade-long back catalogue studded with jewel-like records. From the furious breakbeat acid and pulverising live bass guitar attack of Feed Me Weird Things (1996) to the self-explanatory Music For Robots (2014) via the virtuosic live showcase of Solo Electric Bass 1 (2009) and the luxurious and otherworldly concrète jazz of Ultravisitor (2004), few contemporary musicians have covered as much ground in as sure-footed a manner. But despite this reach, his long list of releases is characterised only by two things: unpredictability and rule breaking. Given that his dazzling new album for Warp, which will be released on April 10th, is essentially a chamber concerto with him playing all of the parts, it’s safe to say he has come a long way since Port Rhombus EP, his crystalline drum & bass debut for the label in 1996. He is alarmingly predictable when it comes to being unpredictable. But there is also the sense that he may have exhausted the supply of useful rules laid down by other people to break and has now started dismantling some of his own.

“Pitch is primary” was the simple maxim he created for himself as he started work in earnest on what would become Kammerkonzert, the 16th Squarepusher studio album. After releasing Music Is Rotted One Note – his ground breaking musique concrète / future fusion album of 1998 – he made a point of saying he had “abandoned” writing catchy melodies as a “cheap” shortcut to getting people to love his work. Speaking today from his home in Essex, whilst admitting he has often broken this rule since, he states that prioritising pitch here doesn't signal a return to his early monosynth / SH-101 anthems like 'Journey To Reedham'. The tracks on Kammerkonzert may have a lot of melodic content, he jokes, “but I would challenge anyone to actually hum it.”

What is clear from the first listen is that this is not the work of a traditional orchestra. Live drums, electric bass and guitar coexist with other instruments derived from a complex sound library being triggered by Jenkinson, still playing live but using a MIDI-guitar; although it wasn’t initially planned like this. Wanting to work with a group of classically trained musicians for the first time, he started composing for an orchestra during the summer of 2016. Though he workshopped scores with a professional chamber group, the performances lacked an essential component he desired. When it came down to it, Tom’s vaulting ambition exceeded traditional music notation’s capability to convey the rhythmic and textural nuance he needed to make the piece work: “There are clear limitations to conventional scoring when it comes to aspects like texture, which is why so many 20th century composers rebelled against the form. But also, orchestras aren't always renowned for having the funk."

In short, he wanted this orchestral work to have the kind of bounce or grit that he was used to creating via his electronic music – speaking as a guy with one trainer-clad foot planted firmly in the rave – so he began recording the parts himself, initially working them up as a kind of “posh demo” to present to the orchestra as an example of what he wanted. Kammerkonzert is a riot of onyx-hard, hyperfast riffs. It is a riot of fiendish orchestral themes. It is a riot of handbrake turns through varieties of progressive, ambient, electronic and experimental music. But more than all of this, it is a riot of synapse-zapping, sense-tingling fun. These mercurial juxtapositions can fleetingly remind the listener of the visionary French Zeuhl band Magma [‘K1 Advance’], the liquid fusion of Weather Report in their ...Body Electric phase [‘K2 Central’], and the baroque blood-drenched giallo soundtracks of Ennio Morricone [‘K7 Museum’]. Elsewhere the more contemporary North London jazz riffing of Sons Of Kemet [‘K3 Diligence’], the ring-modulated piano of Stockhausen's 'Mantra' and even the atmosphere of Brian Eno’s ambient work with David Bowie [‘K11 Tideway’] all make themselves felt. “Mad man’s breakfast?” Jenkinson laughs, “That sounds like my ideal sort of music!” It’s a sentiment even more striking given that these styles always seem playfully deconstructed, as if he has purposefully upended convention on the micro as well as macro level. These ‘genres’ or ‘influences’ often shift or vanish before the listener can name them, and even then, they tend to run in parallel with other disparate styles which also wax and morph before the ears. Listening to Kammerkonzert is like standing too close to some infernal self-reassembling machine with cogs, pistons, microchips and alternators filling the entire field of vision, so its full extent, design and purpose is entirely unclear... at first. And then, bit by bit, the full glorious picture emerges.

Stream k2 centeral here