Squarepusher ‘Just A Souvenir’

Leftfield noisenik attaches electrodes to the nadgers of the corpse of jazz-funk. It lives!

Bounding out the traps with the scruffy glee of a newborn terrier, Squarepusher’s eleventh push for immortality packs the usual sweaty trysts of enthusiasm and invention, reportedly coming after Squarepusher had “a daydream about watching a crazy beautiful rock band play an ultra gig… I was left with an urgent sense of responsibility [to] honour to this vision.” The result is ‘Just A Souvenir’, a fantastically frustrated fusion of electronica, funk, jazz that could give your iPod a hard-on as you bodypop to its ecletric wonderment. It’s the sort of a wired noise that, if you ran into it in a pub toilet, would fix you with a steely glare before snogging you violently and punching your lights out. Sound like fun? Shut yo’ fat face, of course it does.
 
But if Tony Wilson did indeed once label Jazz(zzzz) as the “last refuge of the untalented”, no one told Squarepusher. Roughly two thirds of ‘Just A souvenir’ is loaded with a stylish Mingus-fried and mutated jazz-funk, balanced by a final third that comprises woozily lethargic jams. ‘Delta -v’ is the musical embodiment of man and machine in complete harmony; a slice of sleek design that sounds like it was recorded mid-orgasm on a futuristic dancefloor. However, at the more wantonly esoteric points (‘A Real Woman’ a particularly guilty culprit), you begin to suspect that the whizz-bang experimentation is covering a slight lack of actual substance. Like a frenzied country walker, Squarepusher ambles all about the boundaries of peculiarity but only seldom pauses to check back to see who is still following. However, this willingness to push invention has arguably been at the very core of Squarepusher’s long-term appeal, and things that aren’t a-broken don’t need a-fixing.

At 44 minutes, ‘Just A Souvenir’ feels like a compact and accessible record. Squarepusher projects often exhibit a Del Boy-esque attitude to album length and experimentation – never mind the quality; feel the width. Not a bad ambition in itself, but sometimes the sheer array of supersonic clicks, beeps, hyper-beats tear by as senselessly as a conversation with a coked-up fax machine; it’s very much a process of not only expecting the unexpected but also learning to understand and appreciate the bizarre nature of Squarepusher joyful schizophrenica. When some philosopher sagely remarked that “sticking to one style is not stylish”, Squarepusher was clearly paying attention.

The final three tracks are devoid of any of Squarepusher’s trademark beserk babbling; ‘Duotone Moonbeam’ sounds a little too much like a lounge band haphazardly tuning up, but ‘Quadrature’ is full of mellifluously mellow bass with a staturely minimal electronic skeleton that leaves you doing twitchy dances around the kitchen table as it floats out the window, possibly causing the sun to appear behind a cloud as it does so. Whether underground, overground or a-wombling free, Squarepusher has still got what it takes. ‘Just A souvenir’ is baffling, in the best possbile way – it’s hip to be square.