Thomas Russell Jenkinson (born 17 January 1975), known professionally as Squarepusher, is an English electronic musician, record producer, bassist, multi-instrumentalist and DJ. His music spans several genres including drum and bass, IDM, acid techno, jazz fusion, and electroacoustic music. His recordings are often typified by a combination of complex drum programming, live instrumental playing, and digital signal processing. Since 1995, he has recorded for Warp Records as well as smaller labels, including Rephlex Records. He is the older brother of Ceephax Acid Crew (Andy Jenkinson).
Early life Tom Jenkinson was born and grew up in Chelmsford, Essex, England. The first school he attended was affiliated with Chelmsford Cathedral, exposing him to organ music. He took an interest in this, as well as in music reproduction equipment. In 1986, Jenkinson went to the King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford. One of his formative musical experiences came from seeing guitarist Guthrie Govan playing in the school's inter-house music competition. He developed a lasting friendship with Govan. Jenkinson joined his first band at 12, a Metallica-influenced thrash metal group consisting of several other pupils from the school. Over subsequent years Jenkinson played bass guitar in various local bands, playing numerous shows around East Anglia and London, and took part in some studio recordings.
In 1991, Jenkinson became interested in house music, hardcore, acid house and techno. He cited hearing the track "LFO" by LFO as an early influence.
Initially considering a degree in physics, Jenkinson enrolled as a Fine Arts student at the Chelsea College of Arts in London. After receiving a student loan, Jenkinson instead spent the money on musical equipment, including drum machines, a mixer, and an Akai S950 sampler.
Career 1993–1995: Early career In August 1993, Jenkinson recorded a piece named "O'Brien"; with his friend, Hardy Finn, he raised enough money to release it with additional material on a vinyl 12". Jenkinson and his friends took the copies of the record to various local record shops but found reactions disappointing. In late 1994, Jenkinson began pursuing his fascination for integrating breakbeats into electronic music. At this time, Jenkinson was becoming obsessed with bringing a "dark psychedelia" to drum and bass (which would eventually reach its zenith with Go Plastic from 2001). By 1995 he was playing live sets, including a performance at Eurobeat 2000 at Turnmills in 1995, and "O'Brien" was part of his setlist. In 1995, he heard future Nothing Records label-mate Luke Vibert's track "Military Jazz" (released under his Plug alias) and was inspired by its approach: This track came on and, amongst the road noise and chatter, I heard what I thought was some sort of hip-hop track being played by a band. As the track progressed, I became more intrigued, as it sounded like they were trying to play as if it had been programmed. Then the Amen [break] came in, and I was floored; it sounded like a drummer playing breakbeats, and made me totally rethink my ideas of programming breaks.
The first recordings using Jenkinson's new setup were released on the Spymania label. Two EPs, Conumber and Alroy Road Tracks, were released in 1995 under the pseudonyms Squarepusher and The Duke of Harringay, respectively. Jenkinson began receiving invitations from clubs to play regular sets, including The Sir George Robey in Finsbury Park.
It was after a gig at the George Robey where Jenkinson met Richard D. James, known professionally as Aphex Twin. The two became friends, and they agreed to release Jenkinson's first album on James' own label, Rephlex Records. Jenkinson sent James a compilation on DAT of forty tracks recorded from 1994 to 1995. James selected twelve of these tracks to form Squarepusher's debut studio album, Feed Me Weird Things, which was released on Rephlex in June 1996.
1995–1999: Warp In 1995, Jenkinson contributed a remix to DJ Food's "Refried Food" remix EP, released on Ninja Tune. The remix led Ninja Tune to offer Jenkinson a record contract, which - along with another offer from Belgium's R&S Records - he declined in favor of a contract offered by Warp Records. Jenkinson accepted the five-album record contract with Warp in December 1995.
Early that year Jenkinson made the acquaintance of Talvin Singh who offered him a slot at his club night "Anokha" held at the Blue Note Club in Hoxton Square, London. Jenkinson and Singh went on to play together on several occasions during this period, including improvised sessions at the end of the night at Anokha, one of which featured guitarist Guthrie Govan, and also at the first Big Chill Festival in 1996.
Shortly after the release of Feed Me Weird Things came the Port Rhombus EP, Jenkinson's first release on Warp Records. The title track was initially a remix of a track by Ken Ishii, commissioned by R&S Records in Belgium. However, the remix was rejected on the basis of it having insufficient similarity to Ishii's piece. "Significant Others" used the DR660 drum machine running through a spring reverb, that Squarepusher found at a jumble sale.
Using the same equipment from the sessions that produced the majority of Feed Me Weird Things, Squarepusher now set about working on the material for his first album for Warp, Hard Normal Daddy. His broad conception for this record was "to push away from the jazz influence that was being felt at the time to a more soundtrack-type of sound". According to Squarepusher, he was listening to—amongst other things—early Lalo Schifrin and the "Deathwish" soundtrack by Herbie Hancock around this time. However, the album also contains some abrupt diversions into quite different musical territory, evidenced in what Squarepusher calls the "Industrial Psychedelia" of "Chin Hippy" and "Rustic Raver".
Squarepusher's electric bass work becomes apparent on this record. He states that he was "still battling with the influence of (Jaco) Pastorius." He wanted to "make the styles interrogate each other, such that one track would question the premises of another and vice versa. As such I suppose it might indicate tentativeness, but in my mind at the time I liked the idea of bringing musical assumptions into question by smashing stylistically divergent elements into each other". In this he follows a precedent set by Frank Zappa, who Squarepusher claimed is "always hovering in the background" for him.
The sleeve artwork was generated from a set of images taken by Squarepusher wandering about Chelmsford town centre. The front cover image is based on a view of the gasometers situated at Wharf Road, near where he lived as a teenager. The 8-bit graphics reflected Squarepusher's resurgence of interest in old video consoles and home computers at that time. This location was subsequently used in some of the press shots in the Hello Everything promotional campaign.
In January 1997, Squarepusher moved to a flat on Albion Road in Stoke Newington, London. This particular residence was shown in the Jockey Slut "All Back to Mine" article from that year, and it was also where Squarepusher's appearance in the "xxx" documentary was filmed.
"Journey To Reedham" brings the 8-bit computer influence right into the foreground. The piece was the first to be recorded of the set and was originally commissioned to be used in a computer game, but Squarepusher decided it was too important to hand over to somebody else's project. The track immediately became a favourite at live performances and was still making appearances as an encore in Tom's run of live shows in 2013. "The Body Builder" was Tom's favourite of the set. This exemplifies a more abstract take on the 8-bit aesthetic, with sounds constructed to deliberately resemble computer game sound effects. "Come on My Selector" has become one of Squarepusher's most well-known tracks, partly due to it having a video by director Chris Cunningham. Doing the video led Squarepusher to develop a friendship with Chris Cunningham.
This period also saw the release of the Burningn'n Tree album, which was a compilation of Tom's Spymania releases. The set includes three pieces that were recorded in late 1995 during the Feed Me Weird Things sessions that were not originally released on Spymania.
Squarepusher started considering new ideas about how to put music together. At this time James introduced Squarepusher to the music of Tod Dockstader, an American composer who had worked extensively in the 1960s, principally realising his compositions by tape editing. Alongside this Squarepusher was becoming interested in the work of 20th Century composers such as Stockhausen and Ligeti, specifically their electronic and electroacoustic works.
After Budakhan Mindphone was completed in May 1998, Squarepusher went to South East Asia for two months, and on this trip acquired a selection of Gamelan instruments. He stated that he was keen to carry on with the method of making music he had developed making the "abstract jazz" elements of Music Is Rotted One Note. Given that the "abstract jazz/musique concrète" idea had in Tom's view been proven by Music Is Rotted One Note. He decided to switch focus slightly and approach the following phase with a less rigorous aesthetic in mind.
This is the first record where Squarepusher started using effects processors in such a way that values for the available parameters would all vary as the piece progressed. Squarepusher relates that "Iambic 5 Poetry" is "apparently one of Björk's favourite songs". This period also produced the "Maximum Priest" EP. "Our Underwater Torch" was partially inspired by a developing obsession he had for the sounds of water. He stated that this piece was obliquely inspired by the films Solaris and Stalker by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. The organ in this piece is triggered directly from an electric bass. "Decathlon Oxide" carried on the ideas initiated in "Fly Street" and "Varkatope" from Budakhan Mindphone and features a Gamelan gong. The record also contains remixes by Luke Vibert, Autechre and Matthew Yee-King. Very few live shows happened around this time, although Squarepusher claims he did in fact do quite a few performances unannounced: He did organise two shows for an ephemeral organisation known as the "Squarepusher Ensemble" which amongst others featured Jamie Lidell on vocals, Mick Beck on saxophone and Squarepusher on bass. The idea of the group was to try to approximate some of the aesthetic of Music Is Rotted One Note and Budakhan Mindphone. The improvisation took place with no guidelines.
In March 1999, with the Budakhan Mindphone and "Maximum Priest" sessions wrapped up, he found himself in quite changed circumstances. He had made new friends in Sheffield and found himself a regular DJ and punter at various club nights around Sheffield. At this point he became quite skilled at tape editing. Another element that he was keen to bring back was the usage of sampled breakbeats. At this time, Squarepusher was frequenting a Manchester-based club night called "Schizm". It was run by friends of Sean Booth and Rob Brown from Autechre who themselves had played there on occasion.
2000–2013: Go Plastic to Ufabulum Early 2000 saw Squarepusher consider "radical tactics". He states it became clear that it was high time return to sequencers and leave behind the live-playing approach, which he had adopted since late 1997. Around this time, he started seeing more of Chris Cunningham.