Squarepusher – Just A Souvenir

The cheesy melodies, the effects, the distorted guitar, and the album being mostly acoustic absolutely compliment the absurd origins of this album, this Squarepusher album with the purpose of only pleasing people with quirky minds has definitely age very well with me!

People find that the electric guitar on this album is too fuzzy and a pain to listen to. That is simply not true, every track is a beautiful blend of rock and jazz.

Fiddley and fun, this is akin to Jack Dangers changing his style with MBM to a more jazz-fusion sound. Both have extensive electronic input, but in Squarepushers case it's not as obvious in some places. Certainly smoother and less jarring than in 'Hello Everything', it's almost as if they have settled into this new sound after a few false starts.
Let's face it, you can't keep playing the same stuff forever, and this era of the project seems to have matured past the noise based antics of the 90's.

The best Squarepusher album finding the balance between drill and jazz, between subtle poetry and experimental off territories, between composed tracks and impro, between robot pre-Shobaleader-One work and human touch, the most underrated also. This album rocks like hell & All his albums are special

An experimental rock/jazz/funk album from the king of drill? Why not?

Tom is truly one who does everything; We go from funk to grunge to electro to jazz to weirdness (most of the time in the same track). An interesting listen, for sure.

Tom, the 1-man band - drums, guitar, synth, engineer, mixer, master.. In this album he shoves the squares straight into your stupid face while you're still doubled over in joy from the last track.

Everything is well covered - drum & bass & jazz - to progressive & grunge. All in the same track even.

Take a time-out to listen through in one setting. Superb production & musical progression take it to the next level.

The one annoyance is that some of the tunes are arguably cheesy. The the melodies and chord progressions in a few of the tracks take me back to playing Nintendo's F-Zero, with that silly soundtrack of generic early '90s guitar solos.

From the man Squarepusher, this is, overall, a timeless marvel of "where it's at" now - mind-melting, genre-bending music fit to wear his name.

With his twelfth album, Tom Jenkinson takes even a further departure from his staple Squarepuher sound of broken beats atop slapped bass and twisted triggers of the Amen Break. Warp's own store, Warpmart, categorizes the album as "Drum and Bass / Breakcore / Electronica", but I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth! (kind of misleading actually). Just A Souvenir is more in the realms of experimental rock and future jazz, with a touch of electronic treatment and a few very tasteful drills, where Jenkinson continues evolving (as a true musician should) in his experimentation with abstract accompaniment of acoustic instruments (mostly his custom built 6 string bass guitar once again) and drums that effortlessly morph between organic and digital. With Just A Souvenir, Jenkinson introduces an element of early garage rock, with vocoder and all, and reminds us once again of his amazing instrumentalist skills. First thing's first - I like it! And after only a few listens, the melodies come back haunting me later during the day. A true sign that I will return to the album! Just A Souvenir opens up with a track titled, Star Time 2 (makes you wonder about its first part) with a fun funky synth/clavichord melody and light beats. From then on Squarepusher moves into improvisational, jazzy, and effected bass slaps over barely comprehensible vocoder blurbs. All of it is truly of psychedelic nature with sparking notes in a kaleidoscope of white, red, green, blue and yellow. On his site, Jenkinson explains that "this album started as a daydream about watching a crazy, beautiful rock band play an ultra-gig." He then goes on describing his fluorescent trip which included an Eskimo on the drums and a classical guitar player that could speed up and slow down the time in his vicinity. I recommend you read up on on Tom's blurred delirium before embarking on this trip. Then bathe yourself in this album which is the interpretation of Jenkinson's memory of the daydream which he held on to as a souvenir. Running at (only) 45 minutes long, Just A Souvenir picks up where Hello Everything left off, becoming more organic with every track. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you'll enjoy this rubber band trip through time. Only the way Squarepusher could.