Squarepusher
My Red Hot Car EP
[Warp]
Rating: 8.0
You know, this is a pretty good time to be alive. We're at least a generation
past a major war, and (hopefully) a few more generations away from global
apocalypse. Tasty mass-produced food products are cheap and plentiful.
Computers almost work, sometimes. And electronic musicians are beginning to
look to other forms of music for sources of sound and inspiration, resulting
in some pretty goddamned excellent stuff.
Electronic music has always had many pitfalls-- a reliance on trite drum
machine programming, a propensity for being gratuitously grating and
"difficult," and the occasional lapse into weak retro fetishism. But when
dealing almost entirely with generated sounds, one is afforded a certain
freedom to manipulate sound as a whole entity. Rather than, "Hey, let's move
that chorus back to before the second verse and put a phaser on the guitar,"
an electronic musician could say, "Hey, let's chop that chorus up into little
pieces, run it through a phaser, reassemble it in a random pattern, and then
turn that pattern into a pitched sample."
Increasingly, it seems that this kind of freedom to experiment is being
utilized by electronic artists daring to venture outside the realm of what
is traditionally seen as electronic territory. Max Tundra's amazing Some
Best Friend You Turned Out to Be utilized more rock-oriented instruments
and songwriting mechanisms, coupled with a freedom to experiment with sound
as a whole that's characteristic of the more evolved members of the sequencer
set. Mouse on Mars's brilliant Idiology incorporated elements of prog
and classical music into the band's warm electronic soundscapes, resulting in
the most gorgeous arrangements of 1's and 0's I've heard this year.
"My Red Hot Car" is, at its very core, a traditional pop song. It's got a
memorable hook, accompanied by memorable lyrics: "I'm gonna fuck you with my
red hot car." It's got a fairly straightforward chord structure, with smooth
synthesizers and drum machines providing backing for the aforementioned
computer-intoned melody. But Squarepusher's Tom Jenkinson is not the kind of
guy to let a piece of music stagnate, no matter how good it is. What makes
"My Red Hot Car" such a great single is the fact that Jenkinson manages to
masterfully balance skittering electronic noodling with straight-up pop.
This EP contains two versions of "My Red Hot Car," the frenetic, fractured
album version, and a smoother version, in which the pop hooks of the song
remain largely unaltered. Both versions of the song are quite good, but the
album cut, which actually appears second on this EP, is thoroughly
attention-grabbing. In this more highly manipulated version, Jenkinson uses
the song itself as a percussive instrument, dicing it into rhythmic pieces
as the song progresses with its own complex rhythms. What's perhaps more
impressive is that Jenkinson accomplishes this without making the track any
less listenable than its more dancefloor-friendly counterpart.
The remaining two tracks on My Red Hot Car provide a nice counterpoint
to the hyperactive pop of the title tracks. "Hardcore Obelisk" is an exercise
in pure subtlety-- no pounding rhythm, no computerized vocals, just a series
of synthesized notes morphing subtly in and out of various tonalities. Granted,
it's not the most thrilling listen, but it's remarkably well-executed, and
provides a pleasant slowdown after the non-stop thrills of "My Red Hot Car."
The final track, "I Wish You Obelisk," bears a closer resemblance to
straight-up drill-n-bass than anything else here-- it's a fine track, but
seems dull in comparison to the sonic extremes of the other tracks. As
a bonus, Jenkinson tosses in a moody ambient track to round things out--
perhaps a quieter variation on "Hardcore Obelisk"-- though you have to
fast-forward past 20 minutes of silence for it. Frankly, I can't be arsed
to put in that kind of effort for every listen.
I don't usually get excited about singles, but I'll be damned if "My Red Hot
Car" hasn't staked out permanent real estate in my musical memory-- perhaps
the first time a pop song so complex and spazzy has done so. Ah, well. If my
brain gives out, I can always have my body frozen, to be gazed upon by the
awestruck masses of the future. A fine time to be alive, indeed.
-Matt LeMay