As
a pioneer of IDM (intelligent dance music), Tom Jenkinson, aka
Squarepusher, has been at the forefront of one of the most difficult
genres of music for more than a decade and a half. This genre, a
catch-all for “avant garde experimental” dance music, is most
notable for its objectionable name and its stylization of
dance, or use of dance materials in a non- or less-dance oriented
way. Some features of IDM are a tacit disregard for what is musically
important to genres around it, a focus on personal experimentation
and aesthetic goals, and a history that informs it only if one
applies a massive stretch of the imagination.
Squarepusher
is essentially reborn with the new album Ufabulum,
adding another complicated chapter to the history of IDM.
Paradoxically, Ufabulum ranks
as one Jenkinson's easiest albums to listen to, in terms of large
scale continuity and clearness of vision, but may be one of the
hardest to grapple with in terms of where it fits in IDM's history.
That is to say that Jenkinson has created something that, unlike most
IDM, reflects the current trends and feel of popular electronic music
but equally weighs that reflection with what he's been working on for
nearly two decades now. It seems that Jenkinson has found a
convincing way of making a Squarepusher album for this decade.
“Classic”
Squarepusher and Current Trends:
All
of Jenkinson's albums can be defined as one of the following: an
“instrument album” (Music Is Rotted One Note (1998),
Budakhan Mindphone (1999), Hello Everything (2006)), as
a “programmed album” (Burning'n Tree (1997), Big Loada
(1998), Go Plastic (2001), Ufabulum (2012)) and albums
that have a fair balance of electronics and instruments (Feed Me
Weird Things (1996), Selection Sixteen (1999),
Ultravisitor (2004)). Each album has a different mix of
acoustic and electronic elements, and employ different strategies for
how to the two worlds interact. The programmed albums have a few
consistent elements: dense, frantic “acid” bass-lines; melodic
lead synths over active harmonic structures; digitally manipulated
timbres; and erratic and disjointed textures in multiple virtual
spaces.
The
most identifiable element of Jenkinson's older programmed music
(namely Go Plastic and Big Loada), is his frantic use
of breakbeats (drums sampled from classic drum breaks in soul and R&B
music), an element he expands on from the “drum and bass” genre
of electronic dance music that was popular in the 1990's. Where most
drum and bass employs breakbeats in a one-or two-bar loop, the
signature sound of Jenkinson and Richard D. James (aka Aphex Twin) is
high rhythmic density and not loop-based. In Jenkinson's older
works, he favors continuous variation of the breakbeat, often with
fast syncopated rhythms. Because of this treatment of the breakbeat,
Jenkinson's and James' music has often been referred to as “drill
'n bass.”
This
practice, however, is definitively not present in Ufabulum.
Instead, its percussion mostly moves at a more diffuse pace, as much
popular electronic music currently does. Since the return of
electronic dance music to the public eye, there has been a general
trend toward steady, predictable backbeats. The most popular
electronic acts of the past few years have tended to not stray too
far from the backbeat, instead focusing on timbral complexity and
movement, while sustaining a repetitive, predictable beat underneath
it. More specifically, some of the most popular electronic tracks of
recent years have had zero melodic or harmonic construction, and
focus entirely on timbral movement for a span of a few bars or a
phrase (with as few as one pitch constituting the pitch content of a
phrase). The drum elements of this music are also simplistic, but
are still, basically, the most important element of the music, as
seen in how the music is mixed.
The
rise of these musical strategies has been accompanied by the
technical, mixing-based techniques of “side-chain
compression” (sometimes referred to as “keying”), and drum
layering, both of which ensure that the kick drum, in particular, is
the loudest element of the song. Side-chain compression automates an
attenuation of the synthesizer lines during each occurrence of the
kick drum, making the synthesizers decrease in the mix as to not
“muddy up” the kick drum, or cover it up. Drum layering is a
simple update to traditional additive synthesis techniques: simply
using more than one drum sample or synthesizer as if they were one.
The resulting sound of these techniques often sees the kick drum
being bigger than the rest of the mix, creating a “heavy” sound.
Jenkinson's
adoption of these techniques on Ufabulum marks
a significant departure from the old “drill 'n bass” sound. It
isn't that Jenkinson has set out to make a dubstep album though, as
there are a number of differences in how the beats appear on
Ufabulum. For
instance, on the tracks “Unreal Square,” “Stadium Ice,” and
“Energy Wizard,” there are sections which each use a modified
backbeat at ~60 BPM, but also use double-time (~120 BPM) structures
in other sections. While the faster versions of these tempos are not
far removed from Jenkinson's tempos on previous albums, the slow
tempos are, generally, a departure from his previous sound. There
are plenty of exceptions to these constructs also. “303 Scopem
Hard” is in an uptempo “acid” style (as the name would suggest
to those in the know), although, it does have a consistent backbeat
to it (unlike, say, “Go! Spastic” from Go Plastic which
is stylistically similar, but with continuous variation in the
drums). The consistent use of the backbeat on this album is a
departure from Jenkinson's previous programmed music, but not from
his recent output (which is largely instrumental). The
sonic nature of the drums has changed to the more modern techniques
as well. On the tracks “The Metallurgist” and “Dark Steering”
the synthesizer lines are obviously side-chained to the kick drum,
ducking the synthesizers out every time the kick hits.
These
techniques may sound like minor technical details, but they have a
very obvious role to play in the psychology of listeners. They let
the listener know that the kick drum is the most important element of
the song, a nearly ubiquitous feature of electronic dance music. This
is a departure for an IDM artist: to come to the table with something
that is so prominently dance oriented. IDM has usually been seen as
approaching dance from the opposite direction: something that was a
possibility, but not compulsory or crucial to the aesthetic of the
music because the artists are working with dance elements to create
more “experimental” structures. Autechre, Aphex Twin, and
Squarepusher have consistently approached dance music with new modes
of composition that generally weaken the dance element, whether on
purpose or inadvertently, in servitude of more experimental
techniques. The utilization of these modern mixing techniques shows
that Jenkinson is more directly confronting the dance question that
has contributed much ambiguity to IDM's identity in the past.
Stylistic Movement and Stasis:
Although
Jenkinson has toned down the percussion's rhythmic density on this
album, it still is not as overtly simplistic like much of today's
popular electronic dance music is. There are some serious rhythmic
outbursts, specifically in the later half of “Drax 2.” At the
end of this track, all of the elements of the texture are recombined
(a sort of textural recapitulation, if you will), making huge,
scattered textures that sound like they could just devolve into pure
noise at any moment. The rhythmic density in the drums is increased
with the addition of a breakbeat, while the bass-line becomes more
frantic frantic, dense, and heavily modulated, and appears in
multiple virtual reverberations around the outbursts of noise.
Besides the fat, deep kick drum, this is classic Squarepusher. This
section feels like “Greenways Trajectory” from his 2001 album Go
Plastic, with one glaring
difference. The texture of “Greenways Trajectory” moves so
rapidly that you find yourself in an alternate music universe: a
dancehall version of “moment time.” What keeps this from
happening on “Drax 2” is the massive kick drum. The persistence
of the long kick drum from beginning to end of the track gives a
solid metric orientation, which is not necessarily present in older
Squarepusher albums. In his older albums, Jenkinson never went out
of his way to make the kick drum hold so much power. It may appear
at downbeats in his older works, but it never appeared,
sonically, as a focal point of the mix to the extent that it would
cut through all of the other elements to reorient the listener's
sense of downbeat.
Jenkinson's
move toward this sound is symptomatic of what seems to be a change in
the role of percussion for him. Where drums were often as much of an
important melodic statement as any of the other elements, they are
now in a role of support. Over the last seven years or so
Squarepusher albums have steadily moved in this direction, but have
each had much different overall tones to them, have focused more on
acoustic instruments, and have much more invested in their harmonic
and melodic content than anything else. Active, dense percussive
structures have simply not been a stylistic focus on these albums,
and with Ufabulum this
trend continues, even though the approach to this album is
dramatically different overall.
Jenkinson's
work has always included the option to use both electronic and
acoustic instruments, but often presents them with a separation
between the two (most starkly on “Time Borb” from Selection
Sixteen). On Ufabulum, there is nothing but electronic
sources, something that immediately snaps the listener back to his
2001 album Go Plastic because the
techniques used on the albums are similar. The urge to compare the two albums is
irresistible, as proven in how many times Go Plastic has come
up here. The more important similarity though, is Ufabulum's
simultaneous similarity to classic Squarepusher paired with its
similarity to contemporary popular electronic dance music.
The
huge synthesizers in Ufabulum
show the same kind of attention to timbral modulation and movement
that current popular electronic music does. Use of frequency
modulation (FM) synthesizers, granular synthesis, and various digital
effects, in a way that change the timbre of a single instrument over
timespans of a bar or phrase is one of the cornerstones of current
electronic music trends. The kind of chaotic, choppy, and harsh
synthesizer that opens the track “Dark Steering” is a perfect
example of current thought about timbre in popular electronic music.
That is really the most astounding thing about Ufabulum, that it fits in with the current trend, but also points the
listener back to classic Squarepusher albums, illuminating how far
ahead of his time Jenkinson has been. All of the tracks on Go
Plastic have these
same techniques in play to varying degrees.
Another
element that appears in abundance on both classic Squarepusher and
Ufabulum
is the “acid” bass-lines. The bass-lines throughout the album
are the most intricate part of each track's texture. The lack of
rhythmic density in the percussive elements does not jump out at the
listener, because the bass is still as active as on any Squarepusher
album. This construction draws attention to the lack of bass-lines
in popular electronic music. (Even though the “wobble bass”
synthesis technique permeates much of what is going on in that sphere
of influence, it has nearly nothing to do with bass, but rather what
happens when one automates different parameters of a frequency
modulated bass signal, rendering most of the interest to how the
upper harmonic profile, the timbre, changes). Jenkinson uses the bass
as the one of the main melodic and rhythmic focus throughout the album, which is
“typical” for him, and is a long standing compositional technique
of his. These bass-lines are highly processed and modulated at
times, constantly changing their timbre from moment to moment.
Ufabulum
reflects how much the
electronic music world has been playing catch-up with more
“experimental” artists over the past two decades. Now that FM
synthesis with heavy modulation and digital effects is in vogue, this
album could function as a new entryway for new electronic music fans
to discover Squarepusher albums that they would have never attempted
to listen to before. Since Jenkinson's music has been labeled IDM
(and all of the phrasal baggage that goes along with it:
experimental, avant garde, etc.) some potential listeners were bound
to be put off just because the “IDM culture” seems inaccessible
or pretentious (that is, if IDM's reputation is as bad as people have
made it out to be for the past twenty years). This album could be a
great chance for newcomers to electronic music to experience what
they have missed out on in the place where the current “norm” was
born.
