Feed Me Weird Things [Bonus Tracks]

Squarepusher includes: Tom Jenkinson.
While DJs were busy squabbling over the distinction between "intelligent" drum-and-bass and "stupid" floor-fodder, 21-year-old Tom Jenkinson dropped "Squarepusher Theme" and bombed all other practitioners of the breakbeat science back to the Stone Age. This virtually unknown Cornwall resident had rewritten the rulebook for both the "drum" and "bass" factors of the popular dancehall equation. Jenkinson's supremely sweet, funky, and unabashedly bravado fretless chops likened him to nimble-fingered fusioneer Jaco Pastorius; his breathlessly dynamic and acrobatic rhythms bespoke a singular imagination.
Squarepusher is freakishly inventive--by turns moody ("Tundra," "Goodnight Jade," "U.F.O.s Over Leytonstone"), manic ("North Circular," "The Swifty," "Windscale 2"), mad as a March hare ("Dimotane Co," the laugh-out-loud funny "Smedley's Melody," "Future Gibbon"), and flat-out brilliant ("Kodack"). On "Theme From Ernest Borgnine," Jenkinson cribs melodies from U-Ziq and the Aphex Twin (whose Rephlex label issued FEED ME) and betrays his electronica roots. But Squarepusher's dazzling breaks-work is utterly without precedent. The impact of his upheaval of drum-and-bass convention had dulled slightly by the time of FEED ME's release. Too many copycats had run with his formula in every direction but originality. Nonetheless, this remains an astonishing record--perhaps the pinnacle of jazzed-up, schizoid outsider drum-n-bass.