Ultravisitor is Squarepusher’s 7th album and arrived in 2004 on Warp Records. At 78 minutes long, it’s also his longest record, bringing together live instrumentation as well as the micro-edited breakbeats and experimental synthesis that had characterised his sound up to that point. As with practically all his albums, Tom Jenkinson handled every aspect of the creation, writing every track, playing all the instruments and producing the record himself.
The record cover is a simple photo portrait of Tom Jenkinson looking straight to camera with a serious but unguarded expression on his face, which just says ‘this is me’ and I think really invites us to regard this as his most personal album to date. One that is perhaps his most honest and comprehensive exercise of self-expression.
To draw a quick Aphex Twin comparison – he was also fond of sticking his face on album covers – but this is not Squarepusher’s answer to the Richard D James Album. In my opinion, I see Ultravisitor as analogous to Drukqs, both in the scope of its ambition, and the depth of the artistic personality on display, also the fact that each release caps off a truly great era in their respective discographies. Drukqs closed off Aphex’s matchless run of releases through the 90s. And I feel like Ultravisitor closes the book on the first section of Squarepusher’s discography, in which he’d been extremely prolific, consistent, and varied. And to draw a final similarity – I believe both records received mixed critical reception, but have gone on to be regarded by fans at least as works of genius – certainly this fan anyway.
While I wouldn’t say Ultravisitor was my favourite Squarepusher album, I see it as the most impressive, and if it means anything at all to say it, “objectively” his best. Detractors would argue it’s bloated and self-indulgent and I hear where that’s coming from. Jenkinson certainly indulges his own tendencies and experiments here, but he’d more than earnt the right to do so at this point in his career. So yeah, if you’re looking for a concise hit of jazzy drum’n’bass to throw on and tear round the house for a bit, go and check out Big Loada, or Hello Everything.
Ultravisitor is a realm where Tom is master and we play by his rules; he allows his ideas to really sprawl out, no stone is left unturned in this quest of musical exploration – pick whichever metaphor you like. There’s some truly unique and mind-bending music here, and at the end of the album you really feel like you’ve been through something. For the same reasons, Ultravisitor can be a tiring listen, not one I’d recommend as an entry point to Squarepusher; its self-indulgence making it somewhat impenetrable to the uninitiated.
Jenkinson had recorded plenty of tracks using live instruments only – no sequencers – before this; even a whole album in the shape of Music Is Rotted One Note. And of course he’d incorporated live playing into his electronic compositions since the very start, but Ultravisitor feels like an attempt to synthesise those elements in a way that goes above and beyond what he’d done before. To help carry this off, he employs the conceit of adding in crowd noise at various points across the record, giving it, if not the feel of a live album, at least some continuity and cohesiveness. It’s pretty clear listening to Ultravisitor that it wasn’t recorded live, but it does make it easier to conceptualise as a continuous experience, some fantastical great gig in the sky, where Jenkinson has access to banks of gear, sequencers, mixing desk, plus every single instrument he’s ever played and the ability to be everywhere at once and play them all simultaneously.
So without any more preamble, let’s get into the music itself.
Ultravisitor the title track opens the album, and instantly sounds like the kind of Squarepusher track I had wanted to follow up Go Plastic. Rather than the misfiring experiments of Do you know Squarepusher, this feels like the true evolution of that sound, with a frenetic rushing bassline and breakbeats bursting and collapsing like miniature fireworks. It sounds futuristic, urban and psychedelic all at the same time. There’s also a return to the nostalgic suburban melodic style that featured in some of his early records, in fact the melody here almost sounds like a reprise of the melody from Theme from Ernest Borgnine, but digitised and fragmented, whereas the melody on that track seemed to herald the rays of sun appearing over the horizon, on Ultravisitor they’re transformed into rivulets of liquid gold. Jenkinson doesn’t maintain the speedy energy for long and soon the breaks are deconstructed, literally before our ears, into a cacophonous wall of reverbed drum hits, creating the sense of a huge space in which the piece reaches its triumphant climax, like a resplendent sunrise.
Later on the record, District Line II is the yin to Ultravisitor’s yang, a darker dystopian journey into a post-urban dreamscape, where all that remains of humanity are transmissions from long dead pirate radio broadcasts. The chopped and re-assembled breakbeats are the clearest through line back to Go Plastic, but here they feel more untethered from their origins in urban music, pressed into the service of a more hallucinatory landscape. The sample of Welcome to Blackboard by The Upsetters – a Jamaican dub band who worked with Lee Scratch Perry – adds a menacing dimension to the atmosphere and those few seconds of sound are put to devastating effect over the course of several minutes. Somehow the piece pixelates, merging from jungle into murky jazz fusion, and when it re-assembles somehow everything is upside down, the bass guitar playing off against topsy-turvy breaks. Like most of Ultravisitor, it has to be heard to be believed.
50 Cycles is another chunky track pushing 8 minutes and expands on the ideas explored in F-train, off DYKS with Tom’s heavily processed voice reciting lines from what sounds like a textbook or the first draft of a sci-fi novel. It’s a piece of two halves, in the first the mix is absolutely saturated with micro-processed glitches and wild pings in dynamic range and the fragments of Tom’s voice are harder to make out than on F-train. Things loosen up in for the final third with an increase in tempo and the vocals are dispensed with in favour of this acid bassline, whereby the bass and the beats feel as though they’re physically popping out of the speakers. I’ve heard Tom state that 50 Cycles was one of the most complex and difficult tracks he’s ever created and you can hear it in the sheer density of sound, to the point where it can actually be painful to listen to. It’s intensely disorientating, even by Squarepusher’s standards, and while the sound design and manipulation of the soundstage are undeniably impressive, it’s quite a difficult track to listen to.
Following that, Menelec is probably the closest thing to normal drum’n’bass on Ultravisitor, which has a bit of a dark tech-step vibe but pretty quickly the breaks build in intensity and we get treated to that squeezing effect Jenkinson seems to love, where the drum hits sound as though they’re being physically crushed. Here it has the effect of making the beats sound like they’re being hurled faster and faster round a shrinking space, like electrons in a particle accelerator.
Sitting at the heart of Ultravisitor like a malevolent storm is Steinbolt, which is unusual in the ‘pusher cannon for having something of a metal vibe. Dont get me wrong, you’re not gonna mistake this for a heavy metal song, though it does take the sound of what could be a heavily distorted power chord, which is then shredded to absolute fuck, with percussion that literally sounds like heavy metal being pummeled to oblivion. I might be making all this seem deeply unappealing or unapproachable and yeah there’s no denying these tracks can be brutal and uncompromising, but they’re not pure exercises in endurance. Even Steinbolt has a melodic component and all the carnage and fury feels as though it’s in service of something meaningful, as the piece builds to almighty resolution at the climax.
But it’s my favourite track on the album, which is the one that most successfully merges the live sound with the electronic in a way that’s dazzling even by Jenkinson’s standards – and that’s Tetra-sync. I’ve talked before about how Squarepusher has two main melodic styles, suburban and cosmic, and Tetra-sync is very much in the cosmic category. Sticking your 9 and a half minute magnum opus 13th down the running order on an 80 minute album is a pretty safe bet that anyone who felt this record was too ‘out there’ had long ago switched off at this point. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s worth me trying to describe this track; the word ‘epic’ gets used far too much. So yeah if I say it’s an epic journey, showcasing some of Tom’s most impressive bass playing, and synthesis of live instruments and sequencing with a higher density of ‘what the fuck’ moments than any other track I can think of, that doesn’t really do it justice. Just go and listen to it after you’ve read this.
Two other pieces that consist more fully of pure live instruments are Iambic 9 Poetry and Circlewave. The former is a high point of the first third of the album and builds on the kind of melodic approach to jazz fusion Jenkinson took on My Sound, off Music is Rotted One Note, and Iambic 5 Poetry on Budakhan Mindphone. Iambic 9 Poetry is better than either of those – in my opinion – and just exists in its own world really. The fluttering rhythm and washes of guitar are unashamedly lovely, but like all the best music there’s a melancholic undercurrent too. Although it’s a very emotive track, it’s never impinged on me to the extent that I’ve ascribed a particular feeling to it, nor is it really associated with any specific memories, despite the fact I’ve listened to it countless times. It really just floats free in my mind, like the music itself.
Circlewave is more circumspect and has an almost post-rock feel to it, in the mournful guitars and gradual building and release of tension. Definitely an autumnal track, coming as it does in the final stages of the record, you could imagine this soundtracking the closing scenes in a film. Again really lovely stuff though.
And then littered throughout Ultravisitor are bridging passages and interludes, some consisting solely of classical guitar, Andrei, Tommib Help Bus and Every Day I Love, all pleasant enough as aural palette cleansers between the more abrasive material. I Fulcrum is literally a fulcrum, between the opening title track and Iambic 9 Poetry, and the sequence of notes he uses there crop up again across the record – it feels like to me anyway- which again add to the sense of it being a continuous performance. Quick shout-out to C-town Smash as well, which is just over a minute of Tom showing off his chops on the bass guitar – a rare moment of uncomplicated joy on what can be quite a draining record.
Ultravisitor is home to some of Tom Jenkinson’s most challenging, but also his most impressive and rewarding music. I don’t know if he would agree with this himself, but it feels like the culmination of a particular stage in his development as an artist, the logical conclusion of various ideas he’d been exploring and building on across several albums, namely his fascination with and deconstruction of urban electronic styles such as jungle, drum’n’bass and UK Garage, as well as his experiments with jazz fusion.
The sleeve notes contain what appear to be cuttings from Jenkinson’s notebooks, used in the creation of Ultravisitor. Their inclusion seems to be an attempt to impress upon the listener just what a labour of love this record was, as if to say look this nearly broke me. Contrast that with the bright colours and iconographic imagery of the follow-up, Hello Everything.
So a colossus of a record. I’m not sure it gets the same broader recognition as some of his better known albums but surely it’s held in the highest regard by his fans. It certainly made a deep impression on me when I began listening to it back in 2004, opening up new avenues of mental exploration and taking me to some far out places.
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