Squarepusher
Depuis 1995, Thomas Jenkinson alias Squarepusher est un cas unique dans l’histoire des musiques électroniques. Musicien virtuose à la basse et à la batterie, c’est aussi un redoutable expert des programmations électroniques. Son style est sans équivalent par sa capacité inouïe à mélanger le jazz, la drum’n’bass, la techno dans une musique en équilibre perpétuel. La violence et le chaos inhérents parfois à ces explorations sonores en font l’un des musiciens électroniques les plus intenses de la scène techno anglaise. Il n’y avait que le label anglais Warp Records, maison d’Aphex Twin et d’Autechre, pour accueillir cet artiste aussi exigeant qu’imprévisible.
Damogen Furies, sorti le 20 avril 2015, est un disque à l’énergie brutale et l’exubérance d’un premier album. Il représente l’apogée et la confluence de préoccupations qui ont émergé le long de la carrière de Squarepusher, approchées avec l’antagonisme et l’audace d’un artiste qui croit toujours au pouvoir de l’intervention.
English
Damogen Furies, his first full-length since 2012’s Ufabulum, sees Squarepusher’spowers in full flow. The techniques and craftsmanship that he has honed overthe course of his career have become some of his signal qualities. He has spentthe last decade creating and refining his own unique software system, and thisalbum is the first to be made using that system exclusively. It is the culminationof years spent experimenting with and hacking hardware and software, havinglong since abandoned the limitations of out-of-the-box offerings. Squarepusher has remained truly experimental in part because he has rejected thoselimitations, choosing instead a compositional process that places the act ofbuilding instruments at its heart. On Damogen Furies we hear a truthful,unembellished representation of how those instruments sound. All of therecordings here were made in one take, with no edits.
Throughout his career, Squarepusher has engaged with two distinct traditions inparticular: that of Miles Davis-school jazz, and that of dance music. On DamogenFuries those two traditions intersect and interact, synthesised into a record thatoften straddles nightmarish drill ‘n’ bass and the early work of electric jazzpioneers. For example on ‘Kontenjaz’ or ‘Baltang Arg’, a virtuosic melodicism sitsatop macabre, unearthly percussion, a middle finger to all those who believe thatmusicianship is the preserve of the defanged conservatoire.
Damogen Furies is a record that has the brutal energy and vivaciousness of adebut. It sees the peak and confluence of the preoccupations that have emergedthroughout Squarepusher’s career, approached with the antagonism andaudacity of an artist who still believes in the power of the intervention.