I just realised: all the albums I've reviewed so far (all three of them) have been recent, within-the-last-year releases, haven't they? Better break that pattern. I bought an old Squarepusher record on Amazon a week ago and it arrived in the mail today. May as well review that.
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Like just about every Squarepusher album, this is an interesting beast by any artist's standards. By Squarepusher's standards it's pretty par for the course. All your Squarepusher hallmarks (tropes?) can be found here: the manic chopping, the fractured beats, the obligatory "messing around with ascending and descending synth tones" tracks, even a remnant of Music Is Rotted One Note-era Squarepusher can be found here (a cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division).
Let's get this out of the way first - the title track is undeniably the highlight. It vastly eclipses every other song on the album in terms of both catchiness and experimental values. For one thing, it actually has a hook. Yep! An honest to God, legitimate vocal hook delivered by the Cube-shover himself. It really works in the song's favour. I like Squarepusher just fine when he's working with instruments alone, but it's great to be able to have a vocal part in one of his songs. Trust me, I've been reciting it to myself all day whenever I've had a moment to myself.
I like how upfront the melody is on this track, too. It's catchy as shit, and plays a pretty prominent part in the song, directly alongside the trademark choppy beats. It's a lovely mixture that makes for one of Squarepusher's absolute best tracks.
The next track, F-Train, is much of the same. It's more subdued than the title track, but for the most part these two songs are very similar. You'll hear more of the weird, spoken word vocals (they remind me a lot of Underworld's spoken word lyrical stylings), more of the trademark chopped beats and slightly less of a melody. Don't get me wrong, it's there, and you'll hear it eventually, but you might need to listen hard to pick up on it. I like this song. It's no highlight, but it's a good come-down after the manic breaks of the last song.
Kill Robok is a little crazier. It's much less structured, and even feels a little messy, as if there's no solid rhythm to it. On the other hand, it has some lovely production work, including some snazzy bleeps and pops, all slathered in a chilly reverb sound. If you like your IDM freeform, you'll like this.
The intro to Anstromm-Feck 4 is a bit embarrassing. For whatever reason, Squarepusher decided to record a voice clip of himself ("Squarepusher's gonna come and take your fucking face off") and put it at the start of the track. It doesn't really sound as cool as he thought it would. Sorry. The track itself? It's not bad. It's your typical Squarepusher song with nothing new added to the formula, which isn't a bad thing. It just makes it hard to write about, as it sounds very similar to some of the other songs on the album.
You could probably skip Conk 2 Symmetriac and Mutilation Colony. They consist almost entirely of dissonant tones that ebb and flow in a sort of disturbing ambient tide. I'm not a huge fan of dissonance, so I'm skipping these two tracks. If you like chilling dark ambient, give them a listen, but as for me, I'll pass.
The final track is a complete change of pace. Up to this point, every track has been hard, digital and cold, but here we are with a warm, studio-recorded cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart. It doesn't really fit the theme of the rest of the album, so it comes across more of a bonus track than anything. That's not to come across as negative, though; I'll take it over Mutilation Colony any day.
Whoops! Almost forgot, this is a 2-disc album! And disc 2 is a live recording of Squarepusher in Japan, having a riot of a time. Long story short, it's really good if a crowd cheering over the majority of the Go Plastic album is what you're after, but if you already have that album*, this probably won't be of much use to you.
So the final verdict? If you're really into your Squarepusher, or want a pretty good starting point to his music, you should really have bought the title track by now. It's as well-structured a song as you're ever going to get from the guy, and contains some of his juiciest glitches and stutters and weird bits and all that good stuff. The next three tracks are decent too, but this is the sort of album that iTunes was made for; if there's only one or two supremely worthwhile songs on it, you may as well only buy those two and leave the others for the die-hard fans, right? That's what this album is for, to me. I give it a 3/5, and the title track a 5/5.
Listen to the title track here:
*Go Plastic is a bloody good album, by the way
Like just about every Squarepusher album, this is an interesting beast by any artist's standards. By Squarepusher's standards it's pretty par for the course. All your Squarepusher hallmarks (tropes?) can be found here: the manic chopping, the fractured beats, the obligatory "messing around with ascending and descending synth tones" tracks, even a remnant of Music Is Rotted One Note-era Squarepusher can be found here (a cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division).
Let's get this out of the way first - the title track is undeniably the highlight. It vastly eclipses every other song on the album in terms of both catchiness and experimental values. For one thing, it actually has a hook. Yep! An honest to God, legitimate vocal hook delivered by the Cube-shover himself. It really works in the song's favour. I like Squarepusher just fine when he's working with instruments alone, but it's great to be able to have a vocal part in one of his songs. Trust me, I've been reciting it to myself all day whenever I've had a moment to myself.
I like how upfront the melody is on this track, too. It's catchy as shit, and plays a pretty prominent part in the song, directly alongside the trademark choppy beats. It's a lovely mixture that makes for one of Squarepusher's absolute best tracks.
The next track, F-Train, is much of the same. It's more subdued than the title track, but for the most part these two songs are very similar. You'll hear more of the weird, spoken word vocals (they remind me a lot of Underworld's spoken word lyrical stylings), more of the trademark chopped beats and slightly less of a melody. Don't get me wrong, it's there, and you'll hear it eventually, but you might need to listen hard to pick up on it. I like this song. It's no highlight, but it's a good come-down after the manic breaks of the last song.
Kill Robok is a little crazier. It's much less structured, and even feels a little messy, as if there's no solid rhythm to it. On the other hand, it has some lovely production work, including some snazzy bleeps and pops, all slathered in a chilly reverb sound. If you like your IDM freeform, you'll like this.
The intro to Anstromm-Feck 4 is a bit embarrassing. For whatever reason, Squarepusher decided to record a voice clip of himself ("Squarepusher's gonna come and take your fucking face off") and put it at the start of the track. It doesn't really sound as cool as he thought it would. Sorry. The track itself? It's not bad. It's your typical Squarepusher song with nothing new added to the formula, which isn't a bad thing. It just makes it hard to write about, as it sounds very similar to some of the other songs on the album.
You could probably skip Conk 2 Symmetriac and Mutilation Colony. They consist almost entirely of dissonant tones that ebb and flow in a sort of disturbing ambient tide. I'm not a huge fan of dissonance, so I'm skipping these two tracks. If you like chilling dark ambient, give them a listen, but as for me, I'll pass.
The final track is a complete change of pace. Up to this point, every track has been hard, digital and cold, but here we are with a warm, studio-recorded cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart. It doesn't really fit the theme of the rest of the album, so it comes across more of a bonus track than anything. That's not to come across as negative, though; I'll take it over Mutilation Colony any day.
Whoops! Almost forgot, this is a 2-disc album! And disc 2 is a live recording of Squarepusher in Japan, having a riot of a time. Long story short, it's really good if a crowd cheering over the majority of the Go Plastic album is what you're after, but if you already have that album*, this probably won't be of much use to you.
So the final verdict? If you're really into your Squarepusher, or want a pretty good starting point to his music, you should really have bought the title track by now. It's as well-structured a song as you're ever going to get from the guy, and contains some of his juiciest glitches and stutters and weird bits and all that good stuff. The next three tracks are decent too, but this is the sort of album that iTunes was made for; if there's only one or two supremely worthwhile songs on it, you may as well only buy those two and leave the others for the die-hard fans, right? That's what this album is for, to me. I give it a 3/5, and the title track a 5/5.
Listen to the title track here:
*Go Plastic is a bloody good album, by the way