Squarepusher: Go Plastic : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Very early in his career, Tom Jenkinson, a.k.a. Squarepusher, set out to make music that sounded like an episode of attention-deficit disorder. He has succeeded only too well. One gets the feeling that the spasmodic, shattered "My Red Hot Car," which leads off his fifth album, Go Plastic, is Jenkinson's idea of a hit single, if only because the keyboard line is warm and fuzzy. Squarepusher's techno music is an exercise in groovy schizophrenia. Like fellow machine nerd Luke Vibert (a.k.a. Wagon Christ and Plug), Jenkinson sometimes sounds like he's trying to condense the entire history of electronic dance music - from acid house to drum-and-bass - into a four-minute track: "Go! Spastic," for instance, is a crazy palette of old jungle snares misfiring, ragga toasting and the kind of sub-bass riffs that set apart the classic early techno tunes of Warp Records, which also happens to be Jenkinson's label. "Greenways Trajectory," on the other hand, is an unlistenable explosion of electronic blurts, warps and wheedles. For sheer virtuosity, you gotta hand it to the guy - he sure can make a lot of really weird noises. But who cares? Since Squarepusher proved that he can make fascinatingly mad noise sandwiches nearly four albums ago, one sorta starts to wish he'd try making something like a song. Now that would be sick and twisted.

PAT BLASHILL
(RS 876 - August 30, 2001)