Tom Jenkinson, aka Squarepusher, is not a man with proclivity for inertia. Since his breakthrough in the 90s with frantic avant-garde drum 'n' bass albums Feed Me Weird Things and Hard Normal Daddy, his career has taken some sort of flipper path, from from electro-acoustic bass solo sections to composing music for robots (2014 EP Music For Robots). Still, he was persistent in maintaining instrumental virtue. In that sense, live-band project Shobaleader One represents taking the turn away from the norm and the onset of the new phase. Where all of this is going to take him and his band, we will see.
I have noticed Squarepusher while I was watching Work of director Chris Cunningham and heard Come On My Selector. I have listened to Feed Me Weird Things back in the day, but I must admit it didn't stand out for me in the ocean of similar releases. In those times, everything that came out of Warp kitchen was treated as the most delicious and exotic dish: Aphex Twin, Pivot, Autechre, Richard P.James, to name a few. Sometime at the beginning of the new millennium, when drum'n' bass became tedious (crowd who acts as inventory in the local clubs would not agree with this), Squarepusher started leaning towards more experimental sound. Ultra Visitor and Hello Everything have been on my repeat, and I believe that is when Jenkinson explained how to make electronic music in 21st century. I consider Ufabalum as an evil twin of Daft Punk's Discovery. Although it was released few years later, by visual identity and experimental sound one can observe that Jenkins decided to spoil fun in clubs and create unique electronic music (his visual identity seems like a parody of Daft Punk, tbh).
Shobaleader One is a plausible step forward. Ok, maybe not that plausible, but certainly great. Elektrac the second album of this group. Jenkins has already proven himself as a musician. While he was working as Squarepusher, he had a vision of creating music that can be played by some abnormal band. Play that can be heard on Elektrac is some sort of fusion of funk, jazz, pop and electronic, and it is all intertwined to sound hypnotic, especially for an amateur music critic as I am. How and what is people play can be called unpretentious virtue, and it should primarily be played to the people who are obsessed with Victor Wooten and Dave Weckl.
Elektrac has fantastic tracks. From The Swifty and The Coopers World that force you to press repeat, to Journey to Redham, a closing track that which has potential to become radio hit. Sixty five minutes flew by. I can only imagine how it feels to listen to them live on some festival. Sometimes, they remind me of Battles, sometimes of Beastie Boys. Anyhow, Elektrac left me speechless. I mean, obviously not speechless since I have wrote this whole review, but you know what I wanted to say/write.
