Filed under: Exclusive, RPM, New Music, Q + A
Warp Records
Though stylistically unpredictable, Jenkinson has remained the consistent, both in output and in principle, unyielding in his quest for experimentation, vocal in his disdain for "cult of personality" stardom. Given electronic dance music's recent surge in popularity, one cannot help but wonder what the recondite bass virtuoso, whose recent efforts display flashes of contemporary influence -- a dash of French touch, a hint of dubstep wobble -- thinks of the rise of stadium house and "EDM," an updated version of '90's blanket term "electronica."
Realizing -- too late -- that I've assigned myself the role of informing Squarepusher about EDM feels a bit like explaining cyber sex to Tesla, and elicits an unnecessarily polite dodge and parry. In the conversation that follows, Jenkinson opts instead to discuss his refusal to abandon his initial premise, the principles that govern his artistic vision, and the relationship between the staggering visuals he's conjured for his live show and the accompanying music on Ufabulum.
How did you come up with the visuals for the live show?
Well, there's a couple of things which I suppose formed the basis of it, one of which was synesthesia, in the sense that quite a lot of times that I listen to music, I have a visual response to it in my imagination. I often have this in response to my own work, and I thought it would be quite interesting to try to recreate some of those images in conjunction with the music that I'm currently making.
One of the other reasons that got the project going, as well, was to try to make the link between picture and sound as coherent, apt and appropriate as possible, because quite often I find that when I watch the visuals which form a part of a musicians live show, or a DJ playing records, I find it hard to see, actually, a link between what I'm looking at and what I'm hearing. A major incentive to do this was to try to make that link as strong as possible, to make it such that, instead of the picture detracting from the sound, like I find in so many other people's performances, I actually am trying to make that link stronger, so that the picture brings something to the audio. So, one way of looking at it is that the pictures help the listener decode the audio. Anyway, that's what I'm trying to do. It's an experiment, very much an experiment.
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