Squarepusher

Hello Everything

Warp

Did you know that fleece- the fuzzy, static-prone fabric beloved by skiers and for a brief moment, the general public of cooler climates- is made from recycled plastic? That furry little insulating jacket used to carry your orange soda. Never one to shy away from the artificial, Tom Jenkinson went totally plastic in the early 2000s on Squarepusher records like Do You Know Squarepusher? and (naturally) Go Plastic, fully embracing the lure of computerized breaks and channeling his jazz-boho tendencies into knob tweaks and infinite edits instead of human chords and manual bass noodles. Having pushed those tendencies as far as they could go, Jenkinson snaps back with Hello Everything, perhaps his catchiest, most compact album yet, and one that unifies all his various tendencies into nifty, memorable tunes.

“Hello Meow” lays out the mission from the outset: A sprinting beat overlaid with tentative melodies calls back to his ancient Port Rhombus days, and when remarkably whole “Amen” breaks slosh in, then give way to a snippet of a classic Jenkinson bass wigout, it complements and strengthens rather than detracts from the growing sweep of the melody. It’s as snuggly and human as beaten fleece, even if it still came from recycled plastic.

Unlike the “pop song” highlights of his last few records, “Hello Meow” isn’t alone in this new, more appealing Squarepusher universe. If you could speak synthesizer and sing with clipping and overdrive instead of human vibrato, you’d be wailing along to “Welcome to Europe,” one of the catchiest ’Pusher tunes, strategically dropped at intervals throughout Hello Everything to refresh the ears and keep the listener, well, listening. Jenkinson claims the album is simply his way of having a laugh after 2004’s long, difficult, and occasionally unpleasant Ultravisitor, but this master beat craftsman seems to have given just as much thought to the structure of Hello Everythingas an album as he has its intricate, absorbing chord changes. “Welcome to Europe” gives way to the darker “Plotinus,” but where its echoed note drops might have oncehung in space or squealed with feedback, here Jenkinson mounts them on a solid wall of old-school breaks and paints the whole thing over with thick bass slides.

There are still a few throwaway tracks of the self-indulgent Squarepusher here: “Vacuum Garden” is five full minutes of ugly tunings, and “Cronecker King” is a brief interlude composed of clips of various instruments lathered in echo. But as the album moves away from the more recognizably organic jazz influence of the first half, these few downers get traded in for fiercer drum n’ bass and acid raves like “Rotate Electrolyte.” Even as the breakneck penultimate track “The Modern Bass Guitar” protests with spastic drums and squalling, transforming synthesizers, those same elements can’t help but return to a catchy central theme and the classic jungle breaks. It’s like Jenkinson can’t help but go back for that fuzzy jacket one more time.

Rob Geary