Squarepusher in London

  • Share
  • From Feed Me Weird Things' weirdo-funk to the grey-area dynamics of Ultravisitor, Squarepusher has always been impossible to pigeonhole. In 2013, when touring his Ufabulum album, he challenged the EDM industry by using a giant LED helmet, widescreen sound and stage show theatrics. On this year's Damogen Furies tour, he deconstructed the stage-show myth with an LP of punishing, uneasy IDM. For one of the biggest events of his career, he took over The Troxy in London on Saturday, October 24th. Expectations were sky-high. After the bolshy acid of 808 State Soundsystem, Tom Jenkinson emerged with Shobaleader One, a live band enlisted to perform instrumental versions of his '90s works. The band were tight, but because the music he made during that period was so reliant on sharp breaks in sound—tempo changes, key shifts—they didn't quite recreate the fluidity and punchiness of tracks like "Beep Street," "Splask" and "Squarepusher Theme." In the end, the performance was underwhelming. Jenkinson, now wearing a full LED body suit, was then left to run through Damogen Furies from start to finish. Punishing from the offset, his set was a crashing assault of tracks ("Xjag Nives," "Stoir Eiglass") that felt designed to challenge the audience. Towards the end of the evening, he dropped the album's standout cut, "Baltang Ort," and rose from his head-banging stance to reveal his five-string bass guitar. As soon as he started plucking his way through a jazzy routine, the crowd erupted. It recalled the more simple sampler-drums-and-bass sets of years past—performances with no tricks or overblown stage shows, but instead a danceable trip to the peripherals of electronic music. Photo credit: Gaelle Beri
RA