Squarepusher 3voor12 interview

Squarepusher: “I want to erase myself completely”
Atze de Vrieze 13 april 2015
For most people he just makes noise, but fans of Tom Jenkinson a.k.a. Squarepusher have been following him around for years, curious about his explorations in electronic music. He once tried to make melodic productions and used a Japanese robotband for an album. Now there is Damogen Furies, a razorsharp and fast sounding album. “I like extremities, but I’m also fond of tunes”

Jenkinson is wearing a large scarf around his neck and coughs between a sentence or two. It’s halfway February and he is in the Netherlands for a gig with the Metropole Orchestra. He won’t be pleased that I’m noting stuff down about his physical state, because if there’s anything that isn’t important for him as a producer, it’s his personal life. Squarepusher works in concepts en he tries to execute those as seriously as possible.
Damogen Furies is already his fourteenth album and it’s just as uncompromising as always. The broken glass flying towards his face on the artwork says it all. He does take performances with classical orchestras just as seriously: the English maverick set out to try something completely different with the orchestra. “I tried to avoid all cliches. Not just in what they play but also in the delivery. No vibrato, no modulations. Those techniques were meant for feeling, emotion and contact. For me they achieve the opposite.”

What’s the alternative?

“You have to know that for this project no new material has been used. It’s based on my most recent project and a lot of the original electronic elements are still in there. I’m really interested in what happens when you let certain elements be played on another instrument. You change the context of those notes with it. Maybe it’s a bit naïve but I thought it always worked like that. I still remember working on a project of the London Sinfonietta about ten years ago. It was kind of a “hands-off” project from my point of view. They asked if they could work with my music and they could. But one day I walked in during a rehearsal and at the end I asked what they were playing. It turned out to be my own stuff. I’m not saying it was bad per se, but it just didn’t meet my expectations. In any case, it taught me nothing about the process I just described, because I had no idea how they went from the original piece to what they made of it.

You talk about changing instruments, but we mostly know you tied to electronic instruments and the bass guitar. Do you have an instrument you use on every album, like Nile Rodgers and his “Hitmaker” guitar?

“I actually just received a bass that I use in my spare time, a really crappy thing actually, but that’s OK. I don’t care if it breaks down or gets stolen and that’s a liberating idea. The instrument is brought back to the essence: a tool. I admit I have instruments I care about, but I’m definitely no fetishist who thinks instruments have personality.”

When you know an instrument through and through, do you lose interest in it?

I don’t believe in complete control over an instrument. I’ve played a four string bass for years now and still haven’t found every possibility yet. Let alone discovering a six-string bass. On my new album I only use instruments I built and programmed myself by the way. I like that for multiple reasons: I like to build those things, that’s the foundation. I also find the technical part of it appealing, to see what happens when you combine multiple elements together. But it’s also connected to the idea I mentioned earlier, to reject the idea of an instrument being special or worth a lot of money.

What I found interesting about the new album: usually I get new music with a tracklist, bio, artwork, sometimes a description from the artist about the album.  In this case there was nothing. Are the track titles meaningless?

“Yes. I find it interesting that when I combine random letters it results in a new word that it gets its own meaning applied to it after a while. At home my tracks don’t have titles, only the filenames on my drive but that’s more of a practical solution and has nothing to do with how a listener should interpret it.”
Is your goal to make extreme music?

“If only it was that simple, really. My music is always honest and represents where I’m interested in at the point of making it, it’s not always progressive. I’m fascinated by extremities, but I also love ‘tunes’. My music is a battle. I combine two things that don’t really match together without knowing beforehand which one should ‘win’. I don’t always succeed with executing an idea as sharp as I’d like, but we’ll just have to call that the human element.”

You’re good at making notes ‘crash’, especially when making really fast tracks. On a technical point of view, what are you doing with those beats?

“Wow, crashing. That sounds interesting. I’m not even sure what you mean by that. It reminds me of that one time – a long time ago – I read a really great review in a magazine. I thought: I should hear this, this has to be great. On my way to the record store there was this entire idea forming in my head how that record was supposed to sound. Upon hearing the record it turned out to be really generic drum ‘n bass, but the review inspired me to act on those ideas I had about the record. Same with your description now: crashing beats, I have to make that now. To give you something of an answer: I think that sudden changes interests me. I love those moments when people are having a conversation and someone says something that makes the conversation go dead quiet. Suddenly you see everyone fall back to the moment before, when it was all understandable. I like to do that too, with sound. I love irrational changes, crashing sounds and abruptness.

Your musical brother Richard D. James recently dumped his archive on Soundcloud. You must have a huge archive yourself.

“Yeah, that’s right. I may have released about 30% of the stuff I actually did. But I do think that everything I released was well worth it. But what do you think: would it been different if would’ve released a boxset with ten cd’s? The Aphex Twin archive, with a booklet containing his entire studio set-up? Would you take it more serious?

That’s the cliche of the music industry, it always went like that. Look at the Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan, that’s for sale now for about 140 euro.

“Yeah, it’s cliche, but would it have been different?”

I don’t know. We’re used to music always being available all the time these days. Something that appears on a boxset eventually makes it way to Soundcloud or YouTube.

“True, a boxset is nothing more than a way to make money. But it does make a difference how you approach the music.”

What I found more interesting was the paradox of his anonymity. He uploaded his tracks on an anonymous account. We can’t really know if it’s really him, he’s just a number. But IF it’s him, then it is ‘the man himself’ uploading all those tracks. It won’t get any more direct than that. It goes well with his experiment to use his personality in his own music, like how he used the voice of his wife on his latest album. In interviews he talks about how his kids try to imitate his music. You really don’t seem to do that at all [talking openly about personal stuff – red.]

“No, I try to erase myself completely. I don’t want to be there. Some people claim to recognize something in my music they call the ‘character of Squarepusher’. Those are the elements that I haven’t been able to erase properly. I’m not occupied with bringing myself out in the public, I find it perverse.

Aren’t you a bit hard on yourself?

“Possible, but maybe it’s also the reason why I’m still here.”
At the same time people admire you as a person, as a musician. Some even call you a genius.
“That’s exactly the reason why I haven’t read anything about myself anymore for about ten years now.”

Do you like being on stage?

“No. Years ago I was always playing behind the speakers, but those things are hanging too high in the room these days. Nowhere to hide! I still remember that it was something I found attractive in the early days of house and rave culture: the DJ was a facilitator of a collective experience. He didn’t have a special position. That feels natural to me. No, I don’t feel at home on a stage, but then again, I don’t feel at home anywhere, so it doesn’t really make a difference."

http://3voor12.vpro.nl/nieuws/2015/april/Squarepusher---Ik-wil-mezelf-volledig-wissen-.html