Squarepusher "My Red Hot Car' Warp WAP147CD
I don't know how many David Foster Wallace readers there are out there, but
he wrote an essay on Toxic Irony, and how permeated our culture is with
that attitude. Advertising, always at the forefront of any poisonous aspect
of pop culture, led the way with ads like Joe Isuzu. The seek to ingratiate
by appealing to the tendency to take nothing at face value. The casualty
of this trend is any credible semblance of sincerity.
The way TJ exploits cliche samples on "My Red Hot Car" just drips of
smirking irony. His twisted take on R&B and drum and bass convention
really work best with listeners who are in on the joke, who hear his
track overlaid with every hardcore and jungle track from the past ten
years.
At the same time he's followed T Power into nu skool breaks territory.
It's interesting that whenever a dominant musical fashion gets played
out (as I'd argue Drum & Bass and EU Techno are) some new group of
kids retreat back into breakbeat music.
Which is an elliptical way of saying that there's nothing really new here,
except a certain transparent calculation to further unit-shifting.
His more recent adventures in deliberately crude jazz fusion, though
brilliant in my opinion, were never big favorites, and hey you sell records
to make a living.
Not to say they aren't killer tracks on their own terms. They're exactly
the sort of thing I love to play out -- deep bass and instant accessibility
are what you need to rock a party. But playing "My Red Hot Car" becomes
a calculation on my part -- a transparent bid to ingratiate myself to a
few hundred sweaty teenagers.
But then there are the Obelisks. Hardcore Obelisk is one long isolationist
drone, which gradually morphs over it's course. It's followed by a short
track of frantic breaks and the trusty 303 through a Sherman Filter Bank.
Then the obligatory hidden track (starts at 26:30 of track 4) which
is a sort of Pink Floyd-esque ambience that goes on for about 5 minutes.
The Obelisks seem completely at odds with My Red Hot Car. They're lovely
tracks, but seem like they're there strictly to baffle the punters who buy
the single because they hear it on the radio. More toxic irony? Maybe,
but craft and cheek of this CD make it essential. But what I'd like to
hear from Mr. Jenkinson is the music he makes when he's being sincere.
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