Music is Rotted One Note was Squarepusher’s 3rd album, released in 1998 on Warp Records. And in contrast to everything he’d put out up to that point, it was produced solely using live instruments with no sequencers or digital manipulation of sounds.
There’s no getting away from the fact Rotted is an unusual album in Squarepusher’s discography, and I might as well say up front, it’s not a record I could ever get into. But since I’m planning to create a video for every album in his catalogue, it seems only right to include this and I’ll give it a more than fair hearing.
Tom Jenkinson has always been up front about the fact he doesn’t like to be pigeon-holed as an artist. And it seems clear to me that music is a process of exploration and discovery for him, with each new phase he’s trying out new sounds and technology, constantly innovating and experimenting, even though he could probably make a more reliable living trotting out something more formulaic and predictable to the same core fanbase.
Thus Rotted could be seen as a bit of a reaction to the burgeoning attention he received for his early Warp releases, Hard Normal Daddy and especially Big Loada. With his star in the ascendancy, and that style – what was often referred to as drill’n’bass – though you might call it ‘progressive post-rave breakbeat’ having a moment, what better time to confound everyone’s expectations and do something completely different. One of his later albums was titled ‘Do you know Squarepusher?’, but that might have been more fitting as a title for this one.
In a way Rotted reminds me of Animal Rights by Moby. Another record where a solo artist achieved some decent success and a reputation for a certain kind of sound, and whether as a statement of artistic freedom or just to surprise everybody, decided to do something completely different. For Animal Rights, Moby also took on the challenge of writing everything and playing every instrument himself (though he did at least work with a producer), in his effort to record an album inspired by hardcore punk. Unlike MIRON, the result for Moby was both a critical and commercial failure, whereas Rotted, although I think it divided fans, was praised critically and has at least found a home among a portion of the Squarepusher fanbase.
Music is Rotted One Note is essentially Squarepusher’s take on jazz-fusion. I’m not a jazz expert, or even a jazz intermediate; I’m not familiar with the signifiers of the different sub-genres, so I’m entrusting the verdict of the internet that this is what’s generally referred to as jazz fusion, which is essentially jazz fused with rock and other styles such as funk and rhythm and blues and has a more exploratory, improvisational style and makes use of more electric instruments, i.e. the electric guitar and bass. And it’s clear even to me, a jazz noob, that Rotted is pretty far from swing or big-band jazz – the vibe is very much experimental avant-garde, led by guitars, bass, drums and synthesisers; I don’t think there’s any trumpet, sax or brass instruments to be found.
Now imagine, if you will, a building, a small portacabin at the end of a row of similar structures. If you went to school in the UK during the 70s, 80s, or 90s you probably know the kind of thing, crumbling wooden slats on the outside and concrete steps leading up to the door. Inside, a threadbare carpet that used to be red many years ago but has faded to the generic shade of dirt. A couple of dilapidated sofas against one wall, maybe they were once brown but they’ve faded to the colour of a cigarette filter. The windows are all papered over with sheets of newspaper, the air is thick with dust and the smell of hash smoke and joss sticks. Opposite the sofas are some instruments, a drum kit held together by sellotape, mic’d up with a solitary microphone, a keyboard, a bass and an electric guitar, a couple of amps, a tangled mess of cables and effects pedals and a flipchart with reams of paper hanging off covered in scrawls of marker pen. Somewhere behind the amps, fiddling with a plug socket is a skinny bloke with a beard and a ponytail. Welcome to the world of Music is Rotted One Note.
As an album, it’s a hermetically sealed work, existing outside of time or contemporary mores. It’s the sound of someone experimenting and indulging some of their wilder ideas without concern for commercial success or even the validation of peers. Tonally, it paints a drab picture in washed out monochrome, and mentally it feels very inward looking – this is reflective, cerebral music, almost solipsistic at times. None of which I mean negatively, all that might be just your kind of thing.
Breaking this album down by tracks doesn’t seem to make as much sense to me as other Squarepusher releases, but I will mention some specific tracks.
Chunk-S basically introduces the album with a funky bass, guitar and drum combination – drawing heavily from classic 70s funk and very much setting the smokey live-lounge vibe of the record. But following that, Don’t Go Plastic veers off into experimental territory with discordant piano chords and skittering drums that don’t so much create a rhythm as sound like a swarm of flies trying to escape a sealed room. It’s interesting, I don’t know if Jenkinson always planned to record an album called Go Plastic, or if he was retrospectively referring back to this piece when he made that record.
For the rest of the first half, the album alternates between more experimental pieces in the vein of Don’t Go Plastic, with rushing arrhythmic drumwork and various meditative solo forays on bass, electric piano and guitar, tracks like Dust Switch and Circular Flexing. And then alternately shorter two minute pieces of pure experimentalism, such as Parallelogram Bin and Curve 1, which each sound like someone playing somewhat aimlessly with the knobs on a synthesiser. Sure they add to the generally unsettled and insular vibe but musically don’t do much for me.
The album’s real highlight comes a little over half way with My Sound, the first track to feature a distinctive hook and have a consistent enough beat that you can tap your foot along with it. Despite the undeniable groove, like the rest of the album its downbeat and offers a washed out colour palette. It feels like the sound of walking home in the pouring rain, with your head down and your hood up, you’re down but you’re not out and there’s some optimism there. I feel like the lo-fi, stripped back production of the record plays to the strength of this track; I can really see the beaten up drum kit when I hear that snare drum roll and the cymbal hits; the alternating bass and electric guitar are present like familiar friends at your right and left shoulders. Rather than so much of the rest where the instruments all come together like a fuzzy grey smear.
The final third of Rotted continues in the same manner as the first two, alternating between bracingly avant garde jazz fusion and interludes of pure synthesiser experimentalism. Pieces like Step 1 and Ruin, I guess are the glue that bind together the longer tracks to create the whole, but in their own right don’t go anywhere or bring the listener much joy (not this listener anyway).
Last Ap Roach rounds things out in pretty definitive style with a sombre kick drum, meting out a tempo of around 40 bpm under overlapping layers of electronic drone and feedback. Like the rest of Rotted it’s characteristically drab and monochromatic, but at least it ends the record decisively.
I think artists should always be applauded for trying something different, for experimenting, for broadening their sound and refusing to be pigeon-holed. Sure, it doesn’t always come off but the world would be a dull place if everyone played it safe. Rotted feels like a record Squarepusher needed to make. Jazz was part of his musical DNA, right from the get-go, so although this is unlike any other Squarepusher record to date, it’s not like it’s a complete bolt from the blue. As he said in an interview at some point, it’s not like he’s ever gonna record an album of country music.
So while Rotted is not an album I can really say I enjoy, I respect its existence and I’ll vouch that it succeeds on its own terms. It creates a distinctive vibe and feeling, a smokey, insular world – just not one that I can imagine appealing to me much. Maybe if I’d gone deep with this album back in the day, when the influence of cannabis would make what Rotted offers more appealing. But as things are now, I can’t see myself revisiting it all that much. Though I will have to add My Sound to my some kind of playlist.
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