squarepusher Squarepusher

How do you suppose Squarepusher got his name?

I've always pretended that he got it from a playstation controller (pushing square button) but in actual fact, I wouldn't have a clue.

Any ideas?

sh-101

lsd

sawtoothpusher doesn't sound as good

44.1khzpusher

Listening to Jamie Lidell talk (at a lecture in Boston) of time he's spent hanging out with Tom and then going on to talk about the meticulous programming of little (as he puts it) LEGO bricks on a MIDI piano roll gave me the idea that perhaps it could be a reference to MIDI piano roll sequencing. Though, the more I think of it, the more I realize that this is probably not the case since he has had the name for a while and, supposedly, did not start using a computer sequencer until much later into his career.

Now my friend seems to think Tom used to sell a lot of acid in his day and that he achieved said moniker by pushing blotter squares. It's another possibility, but I'm not sure how I feel about that explanation.

  Wall Bird said:

Now my friend seems to think Tom used to sell a lot of acid in his day and that he achieved said moniker by pushing blotter squares.

plausible

  ezkerraldean said:

  Wall Bird said:

Now my friend seems to think Tom used to sell a lot of acid in his day and that he achieved said moniker by pushing blotter squares.

 

plausible

thats what i heard

definitely possible. that man loves his acid

i heard a squarepusher is another name for an archer

the word squarepusher comes from james joyce's ulysses.

it means a lad-about-town, a charming knave.

  Quote

THE BAWD (Her voice whispering huskily.) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.

 

STEPHEN (Altius aliqantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit acqua ista.

 

THE BAWD (Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.

 

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)

 

EDY BOARDMAN (Bickering.) And say the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kildbride the enginedriver and lancecorporal Oliphant.

 

STEPHEN (Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti i sunt.

 

(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scar's it with a kick.)

 

LYNCH So that?

 

STEPHEN (Looks behind.) So that gesture, not music, not odours, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.

A man on a flaming pie came to him in a dream and said you are now pusher with a square.

Surely it's obvious that it also bares some relation to the process of creating music, pressing buttons: pushing squares. I'm sure when choosing the name he would have been aware of the various themes such a name would suggest.

I'll have to dig it up, but if I remember correctly it has to do with a square wave moving across an oscilloscope; a pushing square(wave).

for some odd reason i always thought it was videogame related

  triachus said:

for some odd reason i always thought it was videogame related

pixels

'Squarepusher' might be the first name given to a person

  gaarg said:

'Squarepusher' might be the first name given to a person

 

Oh neat. Is that on a t-shirt? I'd probably wear one of those.

Yea, made it this summer.

Not many people of course get it...

That's why there's a little squarepusher sign in the upper right corner of the rock...

People still don't get it though...

I always thought it was just how if you push a square you are making something 2D into something 3D

early on, in the mid-90s, there was always a mention, whenever the name was discussed, about that "he used to sell LSD..." - but it actually always got pushed to one side, the name question, by tom, who would say he wouldn't explain it. the most obvious answer is something to do with pushing buttons on machines, which are SQUARE.

i always kind of assumed that since he seemed to like acid, as in the tb-303, he was pushing (tb-303)acid on people, and well acid blotters are square and it'd be a double intendre type thing.

i wouldn't bet against joyrex's explanation tho

i think it means many things at once, what better way to keep the punters guessing

I always thought it meant pushing the step sequencer keys on a drum machine.

this is what i heard: "Squarepusher sequenced his pre-2000 work on a BOSS DR-660 drum machine, which wasn't designed to sequence entire songs." he said in an interview he thought this drum machine sounded like absolute shite, hollow, soulless, whatever. It sounded "square".

he saw it as a challenge to keep using it nonetheless and and see if he could do stuff with it that it wasn't designed to

do, to "push it". hence the name squarepusher.

  kaini said:

the word squarepusher comes from james joyce's ulysses.

 

it means a lad-about-town, a charming knave.

 

  Quote

THE BAWD (Her voice whispering huskily.) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.

 

STEPHEN (Altius aliqantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit acqua ista.

 

THE BAWD (Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.

 

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)

 

EDY BOARDMAN (Bickering.) And say the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kildbride the enginedriver and lancecorporal Oliphant.

 

STEPHEN (Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti i sunt.

 

(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scar's it with a kick.)

 

LYNCH So that?

 

STEPHEN (Looks behind.) So that gesture, not music, not odours, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.

lol?

pearsquasher.