Album of the week: 6.1

Squarepusher

Ufabulum

(2012)

why you'll love it: Squarepusher goes balls out electronic non-stop glitch

why you'll hate it: Squarepusher subtracts all bass-work, ambience, and abstract noise

It's amazing that meaningful electronic music has become accessible in just the past few years. From 80's synthpop to 00's autotune, electronic production had only seemed to make a big impact into the mainstream through very dumbed down means. Thanks to a decade long groundswell, the internet, and a new generation taking over the media; I'm hearing dubsteb in Wawa while I pour my coffee. The "heavy drop" is already a pretty common slang in the general population, as I've witnessed at a Memorial Day BBQ last week.

So it doesn't surprise me that Squarepusher makes his most aggressive and attention-grabbing album in 6 years, and comments on youtube are flippantly brushing it aside with all sorts of buzzwords like "brostep". In reality, Squarepusher has been plugging away for over 15 years with just as much gusto. Ufabulum appears to be the big realization of this imaginary, uber-electronic, dream-incepted, rock band that bends space and time. Fantasized in his 2008 album, Just A Souvenir, and manifested in his underwhelming side project, Shobaleader One. Ufabulum is the closest to reality this fiction has come, by being this amazing audio-visual touring experience, as well as an album.

The album as it stands alone may not do a whole lot to please the majority of Squarepusher fans. There are the ones who love Tom Jenkinson's intricate bass work, well woven into the songs. For a long time, Squarepusher was pitched as "just this dude playing bass to a laptop." It may have been a smarmy insult, but that line convinced me to check him out back then. There are some fans who love Squarepusher because of his dark and scary experimental jazz. Albums like Music is Rotted One Note (1998), or Ultravisitor (2004), which are less music than audio art exhibits.

Ufabulum is neither of these things. It is all electronic, and just about all of it is easily definable as a song. If anything, it's the fantasy come true of somebody who heard "The Modern Bass Guitar" off of Hello Everything (2006), and said "He needs to make an entire album of this!" Or maybe a more dangerous and intimidating version of Hard Normal Daddy (1997). To certain types of Squarepusher fans, this album may be considered "selling out" or caving in to conventional adrenaline pumping electronic music. To me, it's just another feather in his cap. Something else he has conquered. These are great summer jams. I still can go listen to Selection Sixteen (1999) anytime I want and contemplate the meaning of existence. As you can see by the parenthetical dates, Squarepusher switches between art and pop vices quite often; so thinking one album release means a permanent sound shift is silly. If Ufabulum is nothing more than fireworks, I'm content to enjoy the show.