This tune has disturbed me.
Since I heard it, a distressing sentence has floated around in my head:
“This is the best Squarepusher track in 14 years.”
14 years. Count it up.
I think I was 15 years old when I first discovered Squarepusher. To the young Squarepusher fan I was, it’s been almost a lifetime since he has released music like this.
I was a big fan of 2003’s Ultravisitor, where Squarepusher created an otherworldly environment somewhere between stadium prog-rock concert and IDM basement. It was genre-defying — a unique sound. But it felt perfect. It was a brilliant, successful album.
But it seemed to send Squarepusher down a strange rabbit hole, tenuously exploring the boundaries between live and studio-based music with ever-diminishing returns.
Time to change direction then. An email I received from Warp Records in November said:
‘Be Up A Hello’ sees Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher) return to using a bewildering array of vintage analogue and digital hardware, the same equipment that first helped him develop his sound in the early ’90s.
By the way, the 14-year-old tune I’m referring to is Planetarium:
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