Pushing squares

Fantastically weird. Feverish breaks coupled with electro-noise hooked up to giant LED display. Squares, lines and curves in different colours. Man with a LED mask. UK-based Squarepusher, aka Tom Jenkinson, is all that and much more.

Squarepusher

Neck-cringing, asymmetric beats and breaks joined with ethereal melodies hidden in the wall of pace-maker-reconfiguring bass seem to be the leading thread on the latest album “Ufabulum”, of which the first part of the show seemed to consist of (also, for the first half, only white LED effects). Not impossible to dance to, but one needed a pair of lively feet to step up to the beat.

The second half was more dancer-friendly, the beats more consistent and the general atmosphere, well, a more to the acid side of electronic music (as a point of interest, the LED colours changed from white through blue/red combo to a yellow/orange and finally an amalgam of all of the previous).

Squarepusher is probably not your uncle’s choice for some light afternoon music (unless you have an exceptionally cool uncle), but it is music that is best experienced with your whole body, and where the occasionally errant treading doesn’t cause any damages.

Text: Jari Rytkönen
Photo: Tuukka Pakarinen