Customer Reviews

Go Plastic

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Lately, Squarepusher has been outdoing himself with every release (with the exception of Do You Know Squarepusher? - a hit-and-miss EP). This is my new favorite album of his. He is the only electronic artists who can stimulate my mind as much as some of the best jazz musicians. True to jazz, most of this album's drum tracks never repeat themselves - and at the frenetic jungle-like pace he sometimes achieves, I can only wonder how much time and effort must have gone into it (and that's just the drum tracks! Influenced, I'm sure, by hearing his dad play).

Squarepusher often utilizes effects and modulates the sounds he uses as much as the notes themselves as an output for his musical genious (with just as much spontenaity, intelligence, and creativity), taking his art to the next level. Even though I'm playing this album for the 30th-40th time, I still hear something new with every listen. He really takes advantage of the electronic music production environment and crafts his work to perfection.

A few of the tracks don't stand incredibly well on their own (this is no pop album), but they fit beautifully into the whole of the work. This is truly an album - when I listen to it I listen from beginning to end (with the exception of My Red Hot Car, which is a good way to introduce friends to the crazy world of Squarepusher).

If you like Squarepusher for his jungle-jazz side, this is the epitome of his greatest work - the fusion of his earlier head-nodding hardcore and drum-n-bass with his later adventures in spaced-out-acid-jazz and avant-garde synthesizerings. It is hard for me to write a review of this man's work with out using a bunch of hyphenated or made-up words, because there is no genre - no generic name - for the music. It is Squarepusher.

I have been anxiously awaiting a new Squarepusher album for quite some time now (has it really been almost 3 years since the last proper Squarepusher album?). I should take a moment to describe the sound of Squarepusher, or at least the sound of Squarepusher on this record, since Tom Jenkinson has managed to sound quite different across his albums as Squarepusher. For the most part, Squarepusher specializes in extraorinarily rapid drill 'n' bass; i.e. frenetic electronic music (although on recent eps there has been more of a focus on what I'd call "disturbed ambient jazz"). There is a reason that one of the songs on this record is called Go! Spastic.

The real question is: Is this album a return to form? Personally, I really liked the Big Loada/Hard Normal Daddy-era Squarepusher, when his music was drill 'n' bass with an almost insane amount of melodic and rhythmic structure. After releasing Music Is Rotted One Note, an ode to jazz fusion that was certainly interesting but was not too much like anything he'd done before, many (including myself) worried that the heavily electronic days of Squarepusher were over. This isn't to say that Music Is Rotted One Note is a bad album; it is a good, if somewhat navel-gazing, album. However, as an electronic musician Jenkinson has definitely pushed the boundaries of idm/drum 'n' bass/or whatever label you'd like to slap on what he does so uniquely. His most recent release, an e.p. called Selection Sixteen, was (to my taste, at least) highly disappointing, so the question became: What will the next Squarepusher album be like? I don't think it's overstating the case to say that this is one of the most anticipated albums of the year.

So: is it a return to form? I would say yes and no. First, it is a very good album, and furthermore it's absolutely, totally insane electronic music (i.e. it's not Music Is Rotted One Note, part 2). In fact, most of the music on this album heads well north of 200 b.p.m. The complex drum programming of Big Loada-era 'pusher is in full effect here. Jenkinson is truly a master of molding sound into twisted and amazing rhythmic pulses. Also, My Red Hot Car is firmly in the Aphex Twin vocal stylings mode; that is, it's goofy and profane, as well as being a great song.

However, this is not a complete return to previous Squarepusher styles; but then I guess it doesn't have to be, since we'd eventually get bored if he made rehashes of Hard Normal Daddy every time he released a new album. In particular, the music is more spare melodically than before; there is much more space for the drum and rhythmic programming to run crazily rampant all over the place. Frankly, I am not sure whether this is good or bad; really, it probably depends on your view of Squarepusher and his music. One thing that's for certain, though, is that this album is an impressive landmark in the career of one of the finest electronic musicians around.

I have always regarded Tom Jenkinson as a true musical genius, one of the few. His early work like "Feed Me Weird Things" and "Hard Normal Daddy" blew the roof off of drum & bass conventions with its frenetic beats and insane attention to detail.

Quality control went out the window with some of his more recent EPs, with the exception of the genuinely interesting "Music is Rotted One Note" release. And now, after a long hiatus (a welcomed one, to be sure), he has returned with "Go Plastic," easily his most accomplished work to date.

The tracks here not only reprise all areas of his backcatalogue (including some of the more caustic moments of Chaos AD) but also manage to combine them with a lot of the newer, crazier electronics of artists like Richard Devine and Otto von Schirach on the Schematic label. However, it is Jenkinsons's prowess as a musician that propels his tracks into a whole different zone from any of what else is happening in electronic music. "Greenways Trajectory," "My F*cking Sound" and "Boneville Occident" are amazing in their construction, not just in programming and technique, but in overall songwriting form; they take you on a full-blown journey.

After sitting through "Go Plastic," most likely you'll be glad it's over... and even need a few moments to recover! And then turn it on all over again.

Tom Jenkinson fans will remember the track "Don't Go Plastic" from his experimental Jazz album "Music Is Rotted One Note." As defined by that song and this album "to go plastic" means to have an artificial, synthetic, inhuman sound. That is exactly what he has done with this album, and it is a spectacular success.

If you're looking for easily listened, accessible music, you should probably warm up with something else, such as "Feed Me Weird Things" or better yet, "Burningn'n Tree." On "Go Plastic," Tom Jenkinson turns beats upside down, inside out and backwards in a fearlessly original sonic attack. There is nothing even remotely organic about this album.

The opening track, "My Red Hot Car," is simultaneously one of the catchiest and one of the most abrasive tracks of electronica ever recorded. I'm not even going to try to make an accurate description of it. Fortunately, Warp Records released it on MP3 a couple months ago, so you should be able to find it somewhere on the net. Listen to it. If you loved the "girl mix" of "My Red Hot Car" from the single however, this album might not be for you. The stops and starts, the jerky, remorseless breakbeats of the "boy mix" are what define "Go Plastic."

If I knew of any other albums similar to this one, I would compare them here, but I don't. I wish I did. Definitely not for everyone, but if you enjoy experimental drill 'n bass, this album has a fair chance of turning out to be a favorite.

I don't "get" squarepusher.

Having bought 'budakhan mindphone' and only liking two tracks on it, I was skeptical about buying this release. However, after reading the rave reviews on this page, having the guy at the music store rant and rave on and on about this CD and the fact that squarepusher is touring with plaid, one of my favorite IDM/electronica artists whom I plan on seeing live, I bought this CD.

Now, I love IDM/jungle/drum'n'bass/experimental type of stuff (like industrial pioneers throbbing gristle or the analog sonic assaults of add N to (X) ) and autechre is my all time favorite electronic artist but squarepusher baffles me. Don't get me wrong, there are moments of brilliance here i.e. 'my red hot car' is an awesome track that lives up to all of the accolades on this page (and is he saying what i think he's saying?). I love the spastic shouted vocals backed with manic drum beats on 'the exploding pscyhology'. 'i wish you could talk' is dreamy perfection and the one track I really like a lot and 'plaistow flex out' is a laidback analog close to the disc. However the other tracks sound like random electric screeches, squelches and jarring beats haphazardly thrown together. I could do the same thing on my music generator for playstation ... and I have.

I guess to really appreciate squarepusher you must be under the influence of some mind altering consciousness raising hallucinogenic ... whatever. I gave this CD three stars because it's average. Not really bad but not really good. For me (and those are the key words here: FOR ME) I like music that is challenging but I couldn't find the challenge here. Perhaps as I get older my music tastes are slowly changing or perhaps the state of electronic music is becoming so stagnant and tired that now the challenge is to find the music amongst the chaos and debris (check out autechre's new release ... yeesch). I think I'll stick to the softer, more organic sounds of plaid.

Buy 'go plastic' only if you're a tried and true squarepusher fan as all of the reviewers on this page are. I'm just trying to add a little diversity to the reviews so those out there who haven't heard squarepusher before can get both sides of the coin before making a decision.

I have most of the Squarepusher Records. On Go Plastic for me, he plays hard and with more precision than on any of his other Drum & Bass jazzy record. Several tracks have elements of hard prog rock that get you pumped up! If you are familiar with Squarepusher, everything really comes together for him with this recording, from a progressive rock perspective. Check out everything before this one and the AFX single he was involved with. Awesome spin!

In my never-ending search for imaginative electronic music that is decidedly outside the mainstream (regardless of how you label the styles), it is inevitable that I would come across this. I have to say it has more creativity-per-minute than most anything I've heard recently. Unlike much that tries to sound experimental by simply layering sound upon unrelated sound, this music is actually COMPOSED, beginning to end. There is shape, flow, contrast, sound design, form, texture, and above all, unbelievable rhythm. And, lest I sound too serious in my remarks, there is a kind of humor that underlies everything. I love this album.

. . . this album most certainly does the trick. This is elecronica taken to a hyperkinetic extreme. Bizarre, complicated time signatures are thrown at the listener in the form of wiggy electronic noises. Most of the musicality of this album is fascinatingly derived from dense, spliced together rythms and sounds. Many will find this music too jarring or disconcerting while others will be totally tripped-out and captivated. This stuff will churn your head!

IF this kind of music turns you on, I'd also recommend The Boredoms' SUPER AE which is also really wigged out but even more unique sounding than GO PLASTIC.

To truly appreciate this album, you have to realize what's really going on in between all the beats. 'ardcore heads may be able to understand it a bit better than others. I hate to advocate drug use, but it's a lot easier to understand under the effects of LSD. Whenever you get to the vortex of "Greenways Trajectory" when the "rude boooooy!" vocal finally hits, you will see it all become clear, kind of like that guy in the movie Pi did when he looked directly into the sun.

Tom Jenkinson's music is so amazingly uneven that everytime I think I about buying one of his albums I really have to think about what I'm getting into. I mean just because it has 4 or 5 really frickin' great songs doesn't mean that the rest of the CD will be that quality(I own Feed Me Weird Things and Music is Rotted One Note and both are frustratingly uneven). So where does that put Go Plastic? Its yet another uneven number from our resident IDM ego maniac/genius(just like his "bigger brother" Richard James).

The thing about this album is that best songs on here(My Red Hot Car, . Boneville Occident,Go Spastic, The Exploding Pyschology, I wish You Could Talk, and My[funny]Sound) are so incredible, I can forgive the tracks that I don't really like(which are the the two interlude tracks, Greenways Trajectory, and the not terrible but dull Plaistow Flex Out). While they appear as bumps in the road, the rest of the album is so fantastic I just don't care. All of the best songs feature blistering BPM rates with some Jenkinson's best programing yet. But despite a running theme of pulsating rythms, an intricate battery of sound samples, humable synthlines, and mutated hip hop beats each contain their own subtitle personalities and images. Take the two car songs on here, Red Hot Car starts of as a crusing song till Tom pulls out all stops and its nothing but green till he gets of the adreneline. On the other side of things, Boneville Occident takes on truth and consquences of driving fast because the songs says, this song quickly goes from smooth ride to mangled car wreck. Every song has this sort of feel to it and the great songs do it so well that I can still give it five stars and not feel like I've overrated the album. I would recommend either this album or Feed Me Weird Things as a good starting points for those interested into the world of Squarepusher. Hey may be uneven, but when he hits the mark. Its a dead bullseye.