ultravisitor love/JAS hate

listen to ultravisitor. now. go on.

i don't understand why people find this jenkindigm shift so odd. you can hear embryonic JAS shit all over the place on UV! in particular, iambic 9 poetry, c-town smash, and even tetra-sync would fit in on JAS right proper.

seems to me that hello everything was the anomaly, really.

it would be an interesting exercise to compile an album from budakhan mindphone, MIRON, ultravisitor, and JAS tracks.

I agree it seems people are so surprised with this albums style... but this was were he was heading, it's hinted at everywhere in his work. You may be a little surprised at this particular style, no one could predict exactly this... but you can't say it was completely out of left field. It's all a general progression, It's not like squarepusher is pulling straws with different genres written on each one.

  kaini said:

listen to ultravisitor. now. go on.

 

 

i don't understand why people find this jenkindigm shift so odd. you can hear embryonic JAS shit all over the place on UV! in particular, iambic 9 poetry, c-town smash, and even tetra-sync would fit in on JAS right proper.

 

seems to me that hello everything was the anomaly, really.

 

it would be an interesting exercise to compile an album from budakhan mindphone, MIRON, ultravisitor, and JAS tracks.

I actually listened to Ultravisitor throughout Friday and came to pretty much the same conclusion, especially with C-Town Smash. But my love for JAS actually made the last few vestiges of UV finally fall into place (I'd found it an overlong album before yesterday). I still really like Hello Everything, but I can see what you mean, as it kind of breaks the continuity between Ultravisitor and JAS. Ultravisitor now definitely seems a more complete album, for whatever reason. So although I can see the progression that you mention, it's more in hindsight now that Just A Souvenir has helped Ulravisitor to finally click with me.

I still find Music Is Rotted One Note laborious in its entirety though, so I suppose I need to knuckle down and crack that next.

you're not alone there. i find MIRON hard work, and i fucking love live evil/bitches brew/other electric miles stuff which i get as sorta the vibe he was aiming for, sorta (along with maybe the live weather report/jaco & joni stuff)

i tell you what, i'm glad he seems to have ditched that weird over-loud ringmod bass thing that is essentially the only thing wrong with tetrasync

I think I see what you mean, as Tetra-Sync could well have been the standout track (as it is, for me it's Stenibolt, especially when those awesome teutonic-sounding chords creep in, a la Cherry Red-era Laibach). On the other hand, Circlewave seems one of the more mature tracks out of the two albums.

Even if the novelty of JAS does wear off, I now appreciate Ultravisitor as a result, which can't be a bad thing.

  Caretstik said:

especially when those awesome teutonic-sounding chords creep in, a la Cherry Red-era Laibach).

i just finished listening to it, and they remind me of fucking wagner more than anything else

  kaini said:

  Caretstik said:

especially when those awesome teutonic-sounding chords creep in, a la Cherry Red-era Laibach).

 

 

i just finished listening to it, and they remind me of fucking wagner more than anything else

 

I can definitely see that (and I know, Laibach are/were Slovenian).

glass road reminds me of a less intense steinbolt.

i'm not surprised by the style of the new album, although i am enjoying it :)

  kaini said:

listen to ultravisitor. now. go on.

 

 

i don't understand why people find this jenkindigm shift so odd. you can hear embryonic JAS shit all over the place on UV! in particular, iambic 9 poetry, c-town smash, and even tetra-sync would fit in on JAS right proper.

 

seems to me that hello everything was the anomaly, really.

 

it would be an interesting exercise to compile an album from budakhan mindphone, MIRON, ultravisitor, and JAS tracks.

as the premier squarepusherian zealot on watmm, going back to the days of ~5 years ago where i showed up in my first post-joyrex.com post, and rambled on and on about why squarepusher had sucked since music has rotted me arse and was promptly told en masse that i'm an overly loquatious chochbag who needs to be fucked because the jenkinsonian wares in question were "art that don't understand" i put my proverbial balls on the table so y'all can go "damn, that is a magnanimous set of testes"

watmm cred established, the definitive (read: correct. further read: my) opinion on ultravisitor is as follows:

most of it is boring. the real instrument tracks are boring shite unworthy of any mental investment, and there's my sound part 2 on there, and like, some of them, like that disjointed superjungle track #11 are just kind of lost.... ultravisitor is basically like four tracks that merit attention:

1) ultravisitor

5) menelec

8) steinbolt

13) tetra-sync

and i'm definitely of the type who will buy a proper LP for a couple'a tracks.... plaid's rest proof clockwork comes to mind for 3) little people and 9) dang spot.

keep in mind, from ~5:20 on steinbolt is like the future of music, or at least it should be, and the first 1:30 rocks arse... ultravisitor the song gets wanky at teh end but the first ~3 minutesare proper, menelec has far too long of an intro and outro, and seeing as >[] leaked that song on the net to give people hope for the LP cuz he was so proud of the properly mental superjungle roller he made, when the album came out and he had to do that facade of a live album to further the myth that he's some transcendental one-man-live-band experience, he added like 2-3 minutes of ambient noise wank that goes to show he's even sometimes beyond making music, he can take a fucking long tone and stretch it out here and there.

as for tetra-sync, well, the intro is long and attempts to bridge us from real band to the land where only squarepusher can go... i mean, for the first 4-5 minutes or whatever the track is in perpetual buildup, and by the time some vintage squarepusherian videogame synths show up and the beats start to drill and cascade around, well, if you're anything like me you've got a throbbing mental phallus and you're drooling and going "must... find... essines... must find the precious!" and after the bass solo the wanky onemanjazzband breakdown always gets skipped forward, still, tetrasync is easily one of the ~3 best squarepusher tracks ever. it makes up for budakhan mindphone and maximum priest selection 16 and even most of music has rotted me arse in one perfect moment.

tetra sync is perfection, and i'll put up with a proper LP of wank to have that on vinyl... granted i was too much of a drug addict when it came out and the 2 chances i had to buy it were overlooked, still, when you have one of thsoe critic-fellating artistic masterstroke LPs that loses the core audience, fine, just give me a track i have to listen to 50-100 times in a row when i first get it because i become wholeheartedly obsessed with learning the ins and outs of it, finding every single pattern that gets evolved/devolved changed reworked and ultimately coated in adamantium claws that come out and rip bloody holes in my earlobes via the speaker conduit.

give me goosebumps when i'm properly stoned, dammit, give me the kind of experience that makes me proudly decree squarepusher is my second favourite musician in the history of humanity.

that's why ultravisitor slides as being a great album, for there are brilliant tracks on there that fully justify any and all squarepusher superfandom and consequent fappery.

hello everything has the modern bass guitar for the first 2:30, however, the track then falls apart as it's like getting bored of fucking a fineass bitch. you get her in the sack for awhile, but you realize once you reach that threshhold you look down in her eyes and kind of lose that spark of fuckyeah that caused you to be the transcendental fuck that she so desired in the first place. hello meow is a good song, but in that one live at the leiden liveset or whatever the live version is better, even with the token bits of fuckery where he super slows it down.

i would like to point out at this point in the 04 breezeblock the anstromm-feck 4 (menelec remix) is on that that track is so badass... seriously, i could listen to a whole LP of anstromm-feck 4 remixes because that track is what's right in electronic music.

but yeah, hello everything has no tetra sync type masterstroke on it. just a souvenir certainly doesnt have anything...

before hello everything philie-t said tommy bw0y was in a happy place mentally and as such expect great music, and after hearing the LP i said "fuck that, i want to lock him up with his equipment on an airplane that's flying around the world 3-4 times over, via mid-air refueling, and it wont land til he cranks out 15 proper tracks.

you need imbalance to achieve greatness, you need adversity, you need that indeterminable spark of mindfuck to properly work the wares into greatness, otherwise you end up being the flashbulb.

tho i cant blame squarepusher for going flashbulb, as that's where the millions of dollars/pounds come from: being a sexy beast in touch with your guitar-driven-side.

jim, i guess it heavily depends on your musical background. i spent about a year listening to nothing but coltrane/miles/dolphy and other hard bop stuff, which led me to weather report and electric miles stuff and some other jazz fusion stuff, which i listened to for ages and ages, long before i got into electronic music.

i'm not saying a knowledge of jazz is necessary to appreciate this album, but it definitely does tickle my jazz synapses in places. if you've come looking for some superjungle, you're at the wrong fucking gig.

I really don't see what is so bloody great about the modern bass guitar. It's just a longer, wankier version of anstromm-feck, which really wasn't that great to begin with.

agreed. and i would also like to add george clinton to the list of things that heighten appreciation of this album maybe somehow yeah it's all subjective.

Modern Bass guitar for the fucken win, I love that song so much. It's digital mayhem i the vein of 54 cymru beats except even more concise.

the track at about 4:30 in this... so win. should have been the last track on JAS

My opinion of Just A Souvenir so far is pretty much the same as it's been with the last three Squarepusher releases: some good tracks, some shit tracks, some filler, nothing really holding it together or making it particularly special.

And for the record, I never got into ultravisitor. The album is as terrible as the idea of putting a picture of his own ugly mug on the cover. Each pressing of the album may as well have come autographed with a one-of-a-kind Tom Jenkinson jizz stain.

  Chogg said:

The album is as terrible as the idea of putting a picture of his own ugly mug on the cover. Each pressing of the album may as well have come autographed with a one-of-a-kind jizz stain.

aphex twin subforum?

that's different!

edit: that isn't to say i don't also think rdj is a wanker

sini's word is worth nothing when it comes to anything other than aceyalone, quantazelle, squarepusher "superjungle" and dressing like a pirate at work

the man doesn't even like selection 16

  Chogg said:

some good tracks, some shit tracks, some filler, nothing really holding it together

i have listened to it again and give it a total score of 2/10..it is my least favourite SP release..

i love electronic music though, and good jazz, sun ra, some davis, weather report, improv ,,,but i just dont like guitarish rock too much of it about...sorry you lost my vote as a fan

  amni said:

i have listened to it again and give it a total score of 2/10..it is my least favourite SP release..

 

i love electronic music though, and good jazz, sun ra, some davis, weather report, improv ,,,but i just dont like guitarish rock . too much of it about...sorry you lost my vote as a fan

lol

i think its perfectly reasonable to disown 'guitarish rock' as a genre. its reductive but not more than any other broad statement made about music. i'm tired of hearing squarepusher play his fucking bass, i hate the jazz conservatory practice 4 hours a day instrumentalist self righteous masturbatory academic take on music and i am tired of ring mod. please program some 12 bit drums. yes thats reductive but no i don't like fusion fucking sue me.

ultravisitor is the only electronic music album in the entire world that isnt completely talentless shit. hows that for an avant garde onion you cuntz.

JAS is bad, but it is an utterly obvious progression. He likes to play bass, thus he does.