“Whole days, weeks of my life have vanished making music. I have virtually no conscious recollection of it.”
So said Tom Jenkinson, aka Squarepusher, in 2004. Indeed, Ultravisitor sounds supernatural in ways – there is a particular quality that moves through the record, a quality that is hard to describe, on an album which the artist once called his “spectacle of beauty and of terror. It is unknowable, and will never be understood by anybody, least of all its creator.” And while, over the last 20 years Ultravisitor has grown in stature, it is still the album that Jenkinson described as “like a big argument to me”, where “radical tactics” were used to distill his most effective musical statement.
The artwork features a portrait of the musician, looking squarely into the camera. His look is one of ambivalence – measured, but with a beat of wildness. Perhaps this speaks to the core of Ultravisitor – intense rigour married to an intense instability, which in turn creates an ambiguous beauty.
The title track and its melodies swoop into focus and then soar out again towards a skittering drum & bass / pop / dub hybrid that leads to an organ solo which sounds heaven-bound, bringing us back to Jenkinson’s mangling of many different conceits, technologies and impulses. ‘I Fulcrum’ brings us an extended bass solo, dislocating feedback and a pleasing jazz fleck amid wonky squiggles and bleeps.
Jenkinson can go from that frantic complexity to the gentle world that is ‘Iambic 9 Poetry’, a centrepiece of the record, and perhaps its heart. It is dreamy and gloopy, all harmonics and textured drumbeats that grow in emotional potency. Perhaps this is part of what adds to the ultimate unknowability of Ultravisitor – Jenkinson’s deliberate juxtapositions are what disconcert. ‘Iambic 9 Poetry’ is endlessly intriguing and endlessly sampleable, shape-shifting and brilliant, conjuring up a sense of possibility, and, weirdly, comfort. It manages to connect ideas of sustenance, resilience and grace, and when those drumsticks eventually tap, it signifies we are about to be plunged further into a blissed-out space, albeit one that unfolds via an unexpected shift towards gabber.
Similar twists are everywhere – the brief baroque segment ‘Andrei’, with leavening guitar and a pared back nature returns us to the beginning of things, rooting us in an earlier musical history. It is a perfect preface to the brilliantly deranged ‘50 Cycles’, a song cycle in itself, which apparently took over a month to complete, with indecipherable lyrics and audio clips setting an ominous atmosphere that brings in elements of dystopian hip hop; a real sonic rollercoaster.
Ultravisitor at large, too, is a rollercoaster of a record, one that even Jenkinson, judging by his comments, sees himself as having no real control over. Maybe that really is the case, although at the very least he still manages to create a cohesive scaffolding, and a rootedness that allows that frenetic energy to evolve.
The drum & bass experiment that is ‘Menelec’ complements the bassy psychedelic mushing of ‘C-Town Smash’, which in turn threads into the disorder of ‘Steinbolt’ – heavy metal through a drum & bass blender, revealing something so pure and doomy, a tone that continues through the glassy textures of ‘An Arched Pathway’, where it feels like we are led down a tunnel toward a free jazz rave.
Rave, or perhaps the shared live experience, whatever shape that might take, is present throughout Ultravisitor, with crowd noise woven into various parts of the album. On ‘Telluric Piece’, that texture is expanded on more, perhaps to stress the tension between the live crowd and the solitary listener – suggesting that even in such a shared context, we are all solitary listeners searching for our own personal meaning. These questions are posed through an ambient filter that lends itself to such philosophical explorations, but then we are shocked straight back into the room, through the vital body-cracking drum & bass of ‘District Line II’.
So – unknowable? Yes, but Jenkinson also returns to certain ideas and instruments throughout to bring a sense of familiarity. ‘Circlewave’ brings that earlier organ from the title track back in, and we are reintroduced to incredible drumming, while lower in the mix, we can hear “hello my name is Tom Jenkinson”, as if we needed a literal introduction. Here rock and jazz and even gospel are referenced as ways of being in the service of something other than yourself. That glorious sentiment continues in a sort-of dialogue with the late Jaco Pastorious on ‘Tetra-Sync’, restrained chaos with Jenkinson then roaring, “HELLO! How are you?” – at this point in the record, the answer to his question is unclear.
So it is a salve to be brought to the softer shores of the resuscitated ‘Tommib’ (the ambient gem featured in Lost In Translation the previous year) for ‘Tommib Help Buss’, with which we are gently woken from the dream. It is sweet, not an adjective often applied to Squarepusher’s work, but it fits, with an easy melody that comes back to you in the middle of night, or the middle of a queue, or the middle of a bike ride. It is a soundtrack for a life, or at least a day in the life. That feeling continues on closer ‘Every Day I Love’, with classical guitar bringing delicacy, encouraging us to absorb what’s around us.
It is an affecting, generous way to end such a complicated piece of work, a work that engages parts of every musical idea Jenkinson had had up to this point. It is relentless, restless ambiguity.
A work that emerged in a time where people were more likely to listen to albums in their entirety, 20 years later Ultravisitor demands that you continue that tradition. Ambiguity can fill many with dread, but this seems to be a touchstone for Jenkinson – the sense that ambiguity must be lived with. With his expansive musical vision, he takes us to provocative territory, leaving us with a question mark rather than a full stop. Ultravisitor is an immensely thrilling, technically exciting, wildly emotional and challenging record. An unknowable piece of work, perhaps, but undoubtedly a classic.
A 3xLP 20th Anniversary Deluxe Expanded Edition of Ultravisitor is out now via Warp
