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| Noripcord |
 Squarepusher a.k.a. Tom Jenkinson has flirted with revealing the creative process behind his work before: the Squarepusher Manifesto included with Do You Know Squarepusher was a glimpse into the mind of someone who takes his work very seriously indeed. Accompanying his new release Just a Souvenir is 'Just a Story', an altogether more esoteric look inside the mind of one of British Electronica's stalwarts. A daydream of coat hangers, Eskimo drummers and 'a cupboard full of granite spheres illuminated in a dull orange', perhaps the only thing more surprising than the narrative itself is that, listening to the album, the concept makes sense. The temptation here is to say its a return to 'classic' Squarepusher; though the jazz-influenced bass and drum combination prevalent throughout never really went away, in more recent years it has simply returned to the fore. The attempt to conjure up a 'crazy, beautiful rock-band playing an ultra gig' means that the instrumentation from track to track is much the same, and this is the one major change to the established Squarepusher sound. Indeed, if it weren't for Jenkinson playing every instrument, you could almost believe this were a live album.And as with any good live performance, Jenkinson starts gently, with the breezy nonsense of Startime 2 and The Coathanger leading to A Real Woman, which sounds a bit like Jaco Pastorius covering The Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop. With a vocoder. You'll either love it or hate it. In isolation I fall into the former camp, but an album full of this might have led to broken speakers and a snapped CD....full text |
| Guardian |
| Tom Jenkinson has always moved to the left of centre and, on revealing the premise for his 12th album, he has clearly gone round the bend. For this relatively short opus Jenkinson claims to have captured a dream he had of "a crazy, beautiful rock band playing an ultra-gig" with an Inuit drummer. Despite Jenkinson playing every instrument, including his customised six-string bass, it does sound like a group effort. The electronic timbres of 2006's Hello Everything have been toned down for fuzzy garage rock freak-outs on Planet Gear and Tensor in Green. The Coathanger, featuring Jenkinson's frantic, heavily processed bass playing will have jazz aficionados twizzling their beards up in knots. The dream band seems to exit stage left for the last few tracks leaving Jenkinson, without Eskimo assistance, to conclude the set alone. What a peculiar, undeniable talent he is....full text |
| Allmusic |
| From the fevered imagination of Squarepusher's Tom Jenkinson, Just a Souvenir attempts to soundtrack a vivid dream where Jenkinson experienced a live concert like none other. Surprisingly, the album succeeds despite the dream's inclusion of portions where a river appears on-stage (forcing bandmembers to begin kayaking) and all the drums in the Eskimo's drumkit repeatedly changing places with each other. Obviously, the fact that a piece of art springs from a dream isn't very rare, nor is the fact that dreams are usually surreal, but this tale becomes important because it's a key way to describe the sound of the music -- kinetic, hyperactive, quickly changing from one previously unimaginable piece of music-making to another. Of all artists, Jenkinson continues to have one of the most active musical imaginations (another nod to dreaming). Granted, his ideas wouldn't sound half as astonishing if they were slowed to normal speed, but they'd still sound at least half-crazy. Of the entire Squarepusher discography, Just a Souvenir most resembles Hard Normal Daddy with its hyper-speed drums and bass, sounding more and more like a scattered but fascinating Weather Report with each passing minute. Jenkinson's work on electric bass is as good as it's ever been, and when he puts the bass down, he's reaching for all manner of played or programmed equipment to express his ideas. Still sounding like no other artist on the planet -- whether because of talent or intent -- Squarepusher succeeds again with a radical, challenging piece of music....full text |
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