Tom Jenkinson (aka: SQUAREPUSHER) is the type of rare artist that I can’t imagine doing anything else except for working at his craft.  What I mean by that isn’t that I couldn’t see him having any other occupation because he is destined to give birth to some of the best electronic music ever and that it is his calling… blah, blah, blah, etc, etc.  What I mean is that I can’t imagine him doing ANYTHING else, as in going to the grocery store or playing boardgames at a dinner party with lifelong chums in his living room.  His sonic creations are so elaborate, complex, and multi-dimensional that they often splinter into so many directions at once that the listener’s mind has no other option but to do the same.  Separate corridors and paths open and close; platforms lift, raise and disintegrate.  No one else is better at actually providing depth, layering, and a visual element to their music; seemingly creating something tangible and solid from simple audio.  No one is better at making music that has the potential to physically give me an anxiety attack either, which is why my girlfriend hates it so much when I want to play it.  Over the last decade and a half, the Englishman has twisted and mutated sound into so many varying directions that his only limitation appears to be his own imagination.  His proficiency is ridiculous and his delivery suggests an obsession with perfection.  This is why I have difficulty imagining him in any other element than in one of methodical experimentation, constant restructuring, and focus.  I imagine that even when he’s making a sandwich, his mind is off trying to work out some ridiculous algorithm and, after he puts the bread away and the cheese back in the crisper, he immediately returns to his dungeon, eating with one hand and tweaking knobs with the other.  He’s always appeared to me as some sort of crazy reclusive electro-alchemist, hibernating simultaneously in a futuristic lab and in a Medieval basement.  Both hermitic and hermetic, residing in a hybrid yurt/hovercraft.  As evidenced by the promotional image/album cover (above), Jenkinson’s latest project, SHOBALEADER ONE, is doing very little to dispel such outlandish suppositions of this character as a futuristic cyber-jazz druid. Read the rest of this entry →