Composer and producer Squarepusher (nee Tom Jenkinson) is almost always up to something. I mean this not in the sense that he is prolific (though he is), but that with each new release, he tweaks his sound, experimenting with new textures, technologies or conceptual limitations. Fairweather fans who lose track of his movements for awhile are usually surprised, in one way or another, when they return to sample whatever he’s working on. A new Squarepusher album is usually repelling, intriguing (possibly more in theory than practice) or captivating; more often, it's a little of all three.
On Damogen Furies, his first solo LP in three years, Jenkinson is in (the Squarepusher version of) pop mode. He grounds his unrelentingly brittle, electronic compositions with catchy synth melodies. Though his customary warp-speed drum loops still run off the rails, he relegates them to the role of accompaniment. Dynamics are largely dispensed with—the range is loud to extremely loud. It’s an approach he prototyped on his last album, Ufabulum. For live shows around that time, he adopted a new, flashy stage act, donning a Boba Fett-like LED helmet, and incorporating a complex light show of blinding flashing matrices dancing around his podium. Suddenly, like the great masked dance music connoisseurs of today, he became no longer just a guy with a laptop— he was suddenly, perhaps, someone capable of bigger, more zeitgeist-riding things.
Damogen Furies is less subtle and funky than Ufabulum, but it’s more focused. Here, Jenkinson commits to one primary thematic idea per song, and develops and interrupts it within the bounds of a clear larger structure. Tracks like opener "Stor Eiglass" and "Exjag Nives" introduce pleasant, portamento synth melodies that develop cleverly, spaced out with breakbeat and boiled wah-bass interludes. Tracks like these are the closest Squarepusher has gotten to festival-ready EDM.
But he pushes against these sometimes-generic breakbeats, in his perverse way, tossing in conflicting elements and then rending everything apart into errant bits of space trash, like a child building a LEGO castle and then hurling his blocks in the air. "Rayc Fire 2" is a good (and non-anxiety-inducing) example: Beginning with a mechanistic, mid-tempo groove and pointillistic melody, it becomes increasingly fragmented and fitful, interrupted by jazz fusion-informed flights of fancy. The similarly restless "Kontenjaz" breaks down into rhythmic semi-choas, its meter deteriorating in a way that has more to do with Ornette Coleman & Prime Time than The Richard D. James Album.
Moments like these get at what is most interesting about Squarepusher’s work. Even on an album as wholly electronic-sounding as Damogen Furies, Jenkinson's musicality remains organic and responsive. Rather than using technology to surpass the limitations of live acoustic instruments, he creates moments of human flexibility with it (see also his music for robot performers from last year). It is this exploratory drive which has always made him notable, the the face behind his many musical masks.
