squarepusher Jenkinson discusses recording d'Demonstrator

youse guys missed the one astonishing detail

the deck he is using is analog-tascam 16 track

i have the 8 track version and it is a killer

alos the euphoix console he has is worth 45k US

tom is ballin!

  On 11/9/2010 at 3:02 PM, oscillik said:

 

blah blah

 

  Squarepusher article said:

The two track master was recorded digitally using the A/D converters of a Neve 1073DPD running at 96khz

lol

i don´t understand what made you laugh out loud at that, please enlighten us

Everyone worth their mustard works in 192kHz.

If for a simpler sounding track like Crytic Motion he went to that lenght imagine if he described the process of recording Boneville Occident

  On 11/9/2010 at 5:19 PM, thepilot said:

  Squarepusher article said:

In the final mix down, the 909 bass drum and snare subtly compress pretty much every instrument.

Thus we have solved the mystery of teh ed banger interest.

haha. :')

i thought this was supposed to be a live version of JAS. where are all those subtle sidechains going to be when they're on stage?

honestly, i DO love love love hearing the tech details, but i'm disappointed to hear that it wasn't a live jam like i was led to believe. he's talking about having one guy come in this week and play some chords, this other guy come in the week before and play some drums.

this is not JAS live, this is JAS with some session musicians.

ordered the cryptic motion 12" with the oizo remix on the other side. letting the rest be. really don't want to slag off the second album, but i will if i have to mr. jenkinson

i don't think he is capable of just "jamming" with other people while creating his stuff

he is a control freak having done all of it alone thus far

that said to me it sounds like……a kpm or dewolfe library lp from the 80s doing "urban" fare with the nod to electro boogie/funk and "slick R&B"

i knew tom was rich but a cs3000? damn. i wonder if he owns one or was at someone elses studio. that console can cost up to a half a million usd with all the bells and whistles.

I love when an artist divulges precious studio alchemy in the form of the written word. Tom has a rather cirucular way of writing. (remember the "do you know squarepusher" manifesto?)

  Thomas Jenkinson said:

Some people would say, in looking at my career, that it betrays a confused musical standpoint; optimistically it is termed unpredictable, more derisively it is said to be self-cancelling, in that within the wide aesthetic range in the work, one part contradicts and undermines another, resulting in something akin to the mixing of all the different paints on the palette. This is an important point to realise: I take no refuge behind standpoints. This has manifested itself as part of my fundamental creative aspiration- to see across as opposed to seeing from.

 

At first, there needs to be the presence both of a view rooted in inherited opinion, effectively treated as transparent and assumed to be inherently correct, and a will to play with that view, to endlessly distort it and to ultimately be prepared to destroy it. A kind of simultaneous faith and critical ingenuity are required as, without the latter one is bound to a reverential repetition of received wisdom, and without the former ones sparks quickly die away once the entrenched standpoint is supposedly vanquished.

 

To make a lethal attack on, say a musical standpoint, that standpoint must first be loved, understood and accommodated before it can be assailed, and this problem is exemplified with much youth culture that seeks to destroy its perceived antithetical enemy simply by contradicting it. It is not enough to behead your enemy, they must first be invited in and made to feel welcome in order to be comprehensively destroyed i.e. they must be in some way incorporated.

 

This process should seem familiar as it is the time honoured way of dissipating polarised energy away from musical movements: by making them popular. What I am doing is turning this system on its head: instead of incorporating isolated views into mainstream equivalents, for the sake of destroying culture in the name of the corporation, I incorporate isolated views into my standpoint, indeed to the point of seemingly cancelling out a coherent view, for the sake of destroying culture in the name of the individual. In this sense I advocate completely respect-less exploitation of all forms available, as this is the only road that could possibly render an individual immune to being dissolved into mainstream castration, insofar as the music industry as it stands feeds most happily on artists with discrete viewpoints:identity-cults can only be effectively generated from one dimensional personalities. Personal identity must be entirely subjugated and rendered formless in order to have any sort of freedom in our era.

 

A common error is mistaking contradiction or negation of a consensus view for freedom; this leads to phenomena symbiotic with mainstream culture and equally poisonous i.e. movements who identify themselves exclusively with a cynical commentary on the mainstream. This is a dustbin for so called artists: diametrically opposed to the mainstream, they are still very much obliged to march to its tune, or of course its inversion. Being conscious of the fallacy in their claim of independence, the views always deliberately remain self-contained, and just as a surfeit of cultural control gives rise to overweight smug cretins, an almost total absence of it gives rise to the revolting snide dinginess of the eternally subjugated. The lesson is that no punks have yet been punk enough - rejecting and negating the mainstream just as quickly becomes subsumed in its own poisonous cliches, (thus often becoming eligible for mass production).

 

It is essential for any creator to want to negate and to reject, but this has to be coupled with a consummate understanding of the phenomena one seeks to reject. Otherwise, not understanding the language of negation, the object of the negating will misunderstands what is being shouted at it, and carries on regardless. I have learned to see inside every musicians head because, in order to prevent myself from being fully incorporated into any musical ghetto, I have to incorporate every musical ghetto into myself. I aspire to make music useless as a commodity i.e. a prop for the identities and personalities of the mindless; and if this is all that music constitutes in our era, then to maximise every conceivable parameter until it completely destroys itself.

I like his style of writing. I write like this when compelled by some emotional force. I sort of consider it the heavy vocabulary artilary of sorts. I like that Tom is not afraid to come off as an aloof studio nut though. I remember his writing something akin to "the astute listener will notice" while referencing a pedal point or something. I don't think he was necesarily trying to shoot from the technolical hip to launch his point far above the average reader's head, BUT I think his tongue may have actually broken through his cheek by the time he finished those few paragraphs about Cryptic Motion. In any event, it was a great read as I love to hear any artist talk (however cyclical) about his or her craft. Thanks so very much for posting OP!!

Fantastic. I'm astounded that he went as far into the workings of his synth patches as he did, not that he couldn't have done more, but there's no one else who's DSP I'd rather learn about than him and thus far he's one of the few people (with such a complex system) to explicitly state what they're doing, even if it could have used more explanation.

Keep it coming, Tom.

has this interview been taken off the dummymag site or something?