Customer Reviews

Do You Know Squarepusher

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This album travels from one end of the IDM spectrum to the other: pop->punk->experimental->Joy Division. Well, the joy division part was just the statement of intent. This album is great music throughout, but it is only one song of each style, so it leaves you wanting more. Kind of a death by diversity. Regardless, this album's point has been well proven by the comments of the audience. Love ~will~ tear us apart. The pop heads all love the first song, (which sort of demonstrates through the constantly shifting DnB styles, the fact that the beat style doesn't change the song that much at all. it kind of steps on the hands of the jenre wh0res out there who think that "tech step is far supreior to dark step or two step or blah blah blah.") but they hate "all that noise [stuff] at the end." On the other side, the experimental freaks all turn their noses up at the poppier songs as being sonically uncreative and overly commercial. As for the Joy Division cover, it seems like no one understood that. oh well.

As music, DYKS is an interesting tour of the scene, and as art, it is the most poigniant work to date. This album is for music lovers, not trendiods with limited tastes. :-p

It *was* still too damn short, and the live disk *was* an insult. Don't pay [too much]. :-)

This album seems to be decidedly unreviewed on Amazon.com (Amazon.co.uk, by the way, has many more user reviews of this particular album). While I really don't want to criticize any reviewing style, "Do You Know Squarepusher" seems not to be have yet been extensively reviewed here for it's actual content. I hope this review will do just that.

The first CD has the new stuff.
The two tracks that possibly make this album worth it are "Do You Know Squarepusher" (the title track) and "Anstromm-Feck 4". The title track is a pristine and masterful drill n bass piece, sporting superb mixing of its drums, its manipulated vocal bits, and its pristine lead humming a quirky and moody melody. Anstromm-Feck 4 is fast and tightly sequenced, a sort of Drum n Bass anthem twisted into a Drill n Bass brain-splatterer.

Now the other tracks are somewhat less interesting, in my opinion. "F-Train" is probably the best of them, with trippy, quirky, drums, layered with a mumbling science-fiction rant. Its quite similar in sound, in fact, to his track "50 Cycles" on his "Ultravisitor" album. "Kill Robok" has a similar set of quirked-out experimental drums, but lacks the vocals, reducing it to not much more than a novelty. "Conc 2 Symmetriac" and "Mutilation Colony" are both experimental ambient tracks, neither of which I found particularly noteworthy. The last track is a passable cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart Again", and completely different from all the other tracks on the CD, as it's primarily acoustic in flavor and only moderately syncopated.

The second CD is a live recording, containing mostly tracks from this album and from Squarepusher's previous album "Go Plastic!". I personally found the recording very muddled, and the live atmosphere not really worth the price of quality. I prefer listening to these tracks in their original form, as Squarepusher's music just doesn't sound right muffled. His breakcore bits need to remain crisp, and his sparkling leads need to keep their crystalline clarity. In short, I've heard much better live recordings.

All in all, this CD's got some good content, but not enough of it. "Mutilation Colony" fills up an entire 10 minutes of the first CD, and is pointedly unvaried. While I like ambient music, it just clogs up a drill n bass line-up, and felt a bit suspiciously like filler.

If you like Squarepusher, and already have most of his other CD's, then I'd recommend buying "Do You Know Squarepusher". Otherwise, I'd recommend some of Squarepusher's other CD's over this one, such as "Go Plastic!" or "Ultravisitor".

I hope this was helpful!

First I'll address the complains about "a bad sound quality" on the Live cd. For the most part the sound is a bit better than your average bootleg MD recording with a stationary mike in a back corner where noone would see it... so the mids are muted, shallow bass, and you get a lot of echo and audience noise. That does not make it (icky) sound, but you still want to slap the sound engineer who setup the mike in a bad place and wish they'd instead recorded the MONITOR and reinforced it with audience noise. This doesn't hurt any of the tunes except for tracks 3 and 4.

Those tracks covered in the live cd are:

1. Mutilation Colony (Short 3:30-5:30)
2. The Exploding Psychology
3. My Red Hot Car (Girl - from the single)
4. Do You Know Squarepusher
5. ???? (original ambient?)
6. Boneville Occident
7. Go! Spactic
8. Greenways Trajectory
9. My F****ng Sound
10. ???? (almost certainly an original melodic tune in the spirit of tequila fish)

The main course is unfortunately short.
1. Do You Know Squarepusher - IDM, blip for blip identical to "Untitled" single, except for a sample at the start you will recognize from "Go Plastic"
2. F-Train - Darkstep, some harsh high-end chirps (I listened with with a flat eq on sony cans) but otherwise an ok rap that adds another checkmark to the list of styles he's experimented with. This and track 1 are a great hip-hop representation of Squarepusher.
3. Kill Robok - Experimental, certainly a feat of programming, only slightly reigned-in chaos
4. Anstromm-Feck 4 - IDM, a nice reminder of Tequila Fish... hardcore fans will love it
5. Conc 2 Symmetriac - Illbient, a short but sweet bridge in the mood of the disc.
6. Mutilation Colony - Dark Ambient, 1/3 of the CD in one track, or if you prefer 3 songs in one. A nice fully explored thought that is begging for an "Obelisk" mix.
7. Love Will Tear Us Apart - Indie/Alternative Rock, you wonder if Tom is biting his thumb at the current round of brit-pop or contributing to it. Conventional wisdom says it could use more gain on the vocals, but maybe that's the point.

The only thing more I could want would be a live recording of "I Wish You Could Talk".

(don't delete this review - I don't know why there are 3 copies of my review here)

This album blows my mind thinking about how much time it must have taken to program this music. This is certianly not a loop album. The track Kill Robok will make you go mad trying to keep up with it. The sounds are all over the place, you think you ears are going to start bleeding, it's freaking wonderful. The topper on this album is the very well done cover of the Joy Division classic, "love will tear us apart". They drop the sampler and pick up the guitar and bass and pay tribute to one of the greatest mellon-collie songs of all time.
The only bad things I can say about this album is that it is a little on the short side but luckly, they include a bonus CD "alive from japan" to make up for that.

it is not the best, it is not the worst. it is simply current, new, fresh, alive, experimental. you people with your narrow minds, how can you judge an incredible album so poorly? the title tracks bobs heads following F-Train, a masterpiece in itself. Kill Robok is unlike anything you've heard before. how can this one man program so much? the question still remains unanswered. can you keep up? this album sounds like "Music Is One Rotted Note" [hyped up] in the future and is setting a new standard by leaps and bounds. maybe if we gave everyone else 4-8 years they'd catch up. But by then, Squarepusher would've already made another album that critics can't understand yet pushes the medium of electronica.

I think squarepusher has probably gone insane. From rumours of going deaf, to owning a new unnamed label with Aphex Twin. To releasing jazzy drill n bass to pure fusion jazz to hardcore noisy drill n bass. And he pulls it off fantastically! but I wonder if tom jenkinson even knows squarepusher anymore... this album is all over the place...first track is the future of pop songs gone beserk, second is the new autechre type beat with tom rapping (not very well imo) over it. more drill n bass insanity follows until we get to a long dark ambient track and a beautiful finish up with a beautiful cover song you might not recognize (i didn't)...I wish the album had stuck in more of the same direction throughout but individually...each song stands on its own very, very well...(with the exception of track 2...sorry Tom you just can't rap, next time get Kool Keith!) Buy it now, manijelro

This, on the studio EP, has a few hyper and cleverly drilled arrangements, recalling Square's most delightfully frantic early 2000 output. However, even on a brief seven tracks, and despite a bit of appreciated contrast (the serviceable Joy Division closer) Jenkinson simply flies off the electro rails too easily into masochistic, irrelevant button smashing without rightful payoffs. I think he is one of the few electronic artists who can convert noise into melody, but when he is being lazy he is only converting noise into noise.

It could take a while (unlike the album itself), but there's plenty of good stuff here. It's not Donkey Rhubarb, and it's not Blue Monday, but what it is is original. It smells like a new car. The best tracks are the first and last of CD1. The inclusion of the Joy Division cover is a good thing, and it's warped and metallic and synaesthetic. TJ has made a good compact album here. It's like an exploding shed

Brilliant work, this time bringing down the drill'n'bass to draw out more ambient-like work -- an extension to My Red Hot Car EP. It sounds like genuine Squarepusher in origin but as if it was being played by Aphex Twin! I heard that Do You Know Squarepusher? is a selection of previously unpublished tracks. I'll entertain any other conspiracy theories.

I just wish he would print for us the lyrics, because the vocals are too hard to follow.

I too would like to dismiss this album as trash; The Alive In Japan tracks have almost no improvisation apart from the occasional yell and "pause" of pre-arranged music. But none of the Squarepusher CDs are meant to be accessible. They are whatever Tom Jenkinson wants to record, not what he thinks the fans want to hear. It just happens that he's usually right, to those who collect the albums.

The guy who reviewed this album at Pitchforkmedia is so so very wrong, I'm sorry, that's just my opinion, but I have to admit it -- Squarepusher is miles ahead of the pack. Nothing, really, to my ear, rivals the playfulness, complexity, and vitality of Jenkinson's work.

So: reviewers (me included) begone! Ultimately, Jenkinson has to make Squarepusher for himself, and if what he's done satisfies him, then he's succeeded on the most important level. The challenges or qualities of the album will inevitably find its listeners, and if the album proves itself to be amazing, then many people will listen to the album. ...

My own opinion on this record is that it is short. Perfectly short. I wouldn't want it to be longer. Last year's Go Plastic will probably be seen as one of the greatest electronic albums of all time -- it is incredibly dense, complicated, hilarious, and fully energetic, it is beyond the scope of so many artists working today that it boggles the mind, a work of pure imaginative genius -- and so I didn't want Squarepusher to release another full album too soon. I still want to savor Go Plastic.

In a sense Do you Know is not actually an album, but a selection of musical foods that Jenkinson has eaten. This is a bolus of various styles, digested and turned into Squarepusher lumps. The effect is an examination of the various influences Jenkinson has seen on his music. It's like a cover record (and as a clue to that goal, ends with a very real cover of a Joy Division song). From Dj Scud to Stockhausen to Joy Division, here are Squarepusher's influences given the intense scissor cut attack he has perfected. It is a wonderful mini-album to accompany the grand overture that was Go Plastic, and shares many of its superior qualities. The wonderful thing about Jenkinson is that he never looks back, but continues to learn from his own glitches and audio graffs.

Ironically, the second disc is a live album recorded last year, and it is cool, but maybe not as cool as actually seeing him, but a good taster of what it would have been like to see him that year. The name, Alive in Japan, is a bit of a joke, because Jenkinson suddenly disappeared from his N American tour with Plaid in 2001 and no one seemed to know exactly what happened. He was supposed to play a whole bunch of shows, but he was nowhere to be found. People thought he was sick, or dead, or just a jerk. Apparently, he went to Japan and kicked it there instead. Oh well.