You know, this is a pretty good time to be alive. We're at least a generation past a major war, and (hopefully) a few more generations away from global apocalypse. Tasty mass-produced food products are cheap and plentiful. Computers almost work, sometimes. And electronic musicians are beginning to look to other forms of music for sources of sound and inspiration, resulting in some pretty goddamned excellent stuff.
Electronic music has always had many pitfalls-- a reliance on trite drum machine programming, a propensity for being gratuitously grating and "difficult," and the occasional lapse into weak retro fetishism. But when dealing almost entirely with generated sounds, one is afforded a certain freedom to manipulate sound as a whole entity. Rather than, "Hey, let's move that chorus back to before the second verse and put a phaser on the guitar," an electronic musician could say, "Hey, let's chop that chorus up into little pieces, run it through a phaser, reassemble it in a random pattern, and then turn that pattern into a pitched sample."
Increasingly, it seems that this kind of freedom to experiment is being utilized by electronic artists daring to venture outside the realm of what is traditionally seen as electronic territory. Max Tundra's amazing Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be utilized more rock-oriented instruments and songwriting mechanisms, coupled with a freedom to experiment with sound as a whole that's characteristic of the more evolved members of the sequencer set. Mouse on Mars's brilliant Idiology incorporated elements of prog and classical music into the band's warm electronic soundscapes, resulting in the most gorgeous arrangements of 1's and 0's I've heard this year.
"My Red Hot Car" is, at its very core, a traditional pop song. It's got a memorable hook, accompanied by memorable lyrics: "I'm gonna fuck you with my red hot car." It's got a fairly straightforward chord structure, with smooth synthesizers and drum machines providing backing for the aforementioned computer-intoned melody. But Squarepusher's Tom Jenkinson is not the kind of guy to let a piece of music stagnate, no matter how good it is. What makes "My Red Hot Car" such a great single is the fact that Jenkinson manages to masterfully balance skittering electronic noodling with straight-up pop.
This EP contains two versions of "My Red Hot Car," the frenetic, fractured album version, and a smoother version, in which the pop hooks of the song remain largely unaltered. Both versions of the song are quite good, but the album cut, which actually appears second on this EP, is thoroughly attention-grabbing. In this more highly manipulated version, Jenkinson uses the song itself as a percussive instrument, dicing it into rhythmic pieces as the song progresses with its own complex rhythms. What's perhaps more impressive is that Jenkinson accomplishes this without making the track any less listenable than its more dancefloor-friendly counterpart.
The remaining two tracks on My Red Hot Car provide a nice counterpoint to the hyperactive pop of the title tracks. "Hardcore Obelisk" is an exercise in pure subtlety-- no pounding rhythm, no computerized vocals, just a series of synthesized notes morphing subtly in and out of various tonalities. Granted, it's not the most thrilling listen, but it's remarkably well-executed, and provides a pleasant slowdown after the non-stop thrills of "My Red Hot Car." The final track, "I Wish You Obelisk," bears a closer resemblance to straight-up drill-n-bass than anything else here-- it's a fine track, but seems dull in comparison to the sonic extremes of the other tracks. As a bonus, Jenkinson tosses in a moody ambient track to round things out-- perhaps a quieter variation on "Hardcore Obelisk"-- though you have to fast-forward past 20 minutes of silence for it. Frankly, I can't be arsed to put in that kind of effort for every listen.
I don't usually get excited about singles, but I'll be damned if "My Red Hot Car" hasn't staked out permanent real estate in my musical memory-- perhaps the first time a pop song so complex and spazzy has done so. Ah, well. If my brain gives out, I can always have my body frozen, to be gazed upon by the awestruck masses of the future. A fine time to be alive, indeed.
