i am very much upset and have been for the past few days because, in a cruel twist of fate, i will not be on these green and pleasant lands on the 20th to 22nd of august when mr. tom jenkinson will be “taking a computer and just bustin the computer open and making some music out of it” at glade – which would be worth the ticket price alone if the rest of the lineup wasn’t also so fucking killer, they got everyone from vsnares to scotch egg up in there.

in an effort to fend off this depression i’ve been trying to formulate some logic within my brain which dictates that squarepusher isn’t actually the greatest musical genius of all time and the fact that i have never EVER seen him live isn’t a heinous omission from my lifestory punishable by death but it’s just not working so instead i’ve decided to orate in the form of five reasons just why he’s such a fucking genius, after each of which i’ve posted a track by him which illustrates the point but isn’t as venerated as songs with a video by chris Cunningham, which seems to be all most people care about in terms of idm really (“aphex twin? Oh shit yeah he’s fucked up, you seen the come to daddy video?” – yeah shut the fuck up)

1. his attention to melody is just as intricate and perfectly contrived as his attention to spasmodic skitzoid drum programming. with nothing but his good friend roland mr. jenkinson can weave a tune which sounds like the future but feels as warm and familiar as the past.

squarepusher - tomorrow world (from selection sixteen)

2. he does insanity just as insanely as the most insane end of the breakcore spectrum yet even when he’s assaulting your ears and melting your brain it never sounds detatced and ironic or offensive, but always gleeful and inclusive, like he himself says if you don’t appreciate his shizat the only possible reason is that you’re “stupid and stubborn”

squarepusher - go! spastic (from go plastic)

3. i’m a traditionalist, me, I like my rockers drug-addled and debauches and my electronic wizards nerdy and obsessive, so I always find it very disheartening when there’s an interview with the latter and they seem to be moronic wreckheads like many of their fans. Luckily, though, tommy fits quite neatly into the “nerdy and obsessive” category as his ten-million page long manifresto in the do you squarepusher liner notes can attest. in interviews he often seems unassuming and quite bemused by the extent of his godlike status and desperate to get back to his reclusive existence, meddling with circuit boards and finding new sounds a bass guitar can make when plugged into five laptops and ten distortion pedals. or something.

squarepusher - do you know squarepusher (from do you know squarepusher)

4. in addition to being a master of the beat and bleep, quite unlike any of the other paradigms of idm, tom jenkinson is also a virtuoso jazz musician. On bass, of course, he IS the fucking daddy but he’s also been known to drop some guitar both electric and acoustic and when not beating the fuck out of the amen break he’s a very talented sticksman too.

squarepusher - chunks (from music is rotted one note)

5. this quote

"The point of using live versions of the tracks is that they show stupid people that, though their own stubbornness prevents them from being able to engage with my music, they hear other people cheering in the background, and realise that although this music is obscure, it cannot be totally inaccessible because other people like it. Because it is obscure, but not totally inaccessible, this makes it cool. This makes stupid people buy it. One day their children will dust it off and play it, and realise that I am the supreme musical genius of my generation. This means I'll still be able to play gigs when I'm an old fart with no ideas. Hopefully."

squarepusher - tetra-sync (from ultravisitor)

and now i wish i'd found room for journey to reedham and theme from ernest borgnine.

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you know when lazy music journalists don’t bother actually researching a band they’ve been told to review and instead just describe them in terms of other bands instead of actually describing the music or providing any interesting information about the musicians? yeah the nme used to do that all the time (and they probably still do - who the fuck knows except for tweeny fans of the klaxons nowadays?) and it pissed me off.

anyway here’s a track from this new band who I don’t know much about but if you imagine mark e. smith fronting mouse on mars ripping off the first track from the latest lcd soundsystem record you’ll get the right idea.

oh wait…

von südenfed - fledermaus can't get it (from tromatic reflexxions)

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there’s a phenomena that seems to be sweeping poverty-striken small-town uk, hundreds and hundreds of little chav children are turning their backs on their burberry-clad elders and dying their hair black and wearing second-hand slipknot and korn tops which make them resemble goths circa 2000.

i’m sure it’s just a phase for many of them and by the time they’re fourteen they’ll be getting twelve-year-olds pregnant and defecating in bus shelters just like their older brothers. despite this, though, i do think that while it lasts it’s quite heartening, but it is a shame that they’re choosing to rebel against the happy hardcore and smooth fm r&b of traditional chavs with such awful tastes in music, though, because they’d probably quite like shouty loud hipster music like the new parts & labor record which would similarly almost certainly be beloved of all angsty thirteen year old funeral for a friend fans everywhere if only it wasn’t the preserve of pretentious beardy fucks in deerhoof t-shirts.

FREE THE MUSIC’S WHAT I SAY! so I hereby demand that if you have a little brother wearing an oversized mcr hoodie and black nail-varnish download the tracks below and force them to listen and in a few years they too may be a pretentious beardy fuck in a deerhoof t-shirt as opposed to an emo travesty or asbo teen.

parts & labor - new buildings (from stay afraid)

parts & labor - fractured skies (from mapmaker)

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HITLER WAS RIGHT
a right bastard that is

now that i’ve got your attention fuck pink floyd. fuck fucking pink floyd. fuck fucking pink floyd all the fucking way home. and yes, I do realise this isn’t 1976 and i’m not jonny rotton – thank christ - but after having to endure two full length solo albums by roger waters and dave gilmour in the car with my dad - for whom the proggy twatcunts are something of a holy cow - with no means of escape it just feels so good to type those three words: fuck. pink. floyd.

another thing I had to endure recently was my cousin’s wedding, which – despite the constant stream of free booze which was of course very much agreeable (when you finished a pint you could just go up to the bar and get a refill! for free!) - was dull as fuck until someone gashed their leg open trying to jump over an ornamental pond which was of course hilarious.

before that, though, i was vaguely watching the early dancers all up on the marquee floor when something dawned on me: men are not meant to dance. they are actually not. with the exception of john travolta, napoleon dynamite and black people, if you have a penis and a scrotum it should not be in your nature to attempt to boogie on down because, even if you're clearly trying to hide your embarresment by dancing overtly ironically, you will always look like a fucking idiot. the females of the species, on the other hand, often largely seem to have a propensity to effortlessly move rhythmically with finesse and look fucking sexy with it, often irrespective of their attractiveness. so, while all these twenty-eight-year-old marketing execs were strutting their stuff while not inebriated enough to have an excuse their jee effs and wives shimmied around mostly looking fucking fine.

i have a theory as to why this is. you see, in this day and age of emasculation and equality (which - when ladies work out how to fertilise their own eggs - will ultimately render men completely irrelevant) women don't really like to think of themselves as objectified, but traditionally women have been seen as sperm receptacles, ovens for carrying a man's child and thereby, to prevent themselves from not serving this purpose and becoming useless, they developed certain traits in order to allure the man into choosing them for to carry his offspring. men, on the other hand, only used to need to kill a bufallo or whatever in order to attract their woman and thereby unfortunately did not develop the intuitive ability to dance. true story.

anyway, on the note of sexy bitches and gawky inadequate looking men here's a track by handsome furs that you've probably already got if you're cool:

handsome furs - dead + rural (from plague park)



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