Hello Everything was released on Warp Records in 2006, two years after the ambitious and sprawling Ultravisitor, and is Squarepusher’s 8th album.
At half the length, and cased in a brightly coloured sleeve with cheerful photos of Jenkinson playing various instruments (traditional and electronic), it presented a much more accessible packaging of the Squarepusher product. Like its predecessor, Hello Everything brings together jazz fusion, live instruments and digitally edited breakbeats, but here presented in a much more straightforward and glossy fashion.
I’d hesitate to say Squarepusher goes pop, but it does feel a bit like Squarepusher for beginners, indeed the kitsch treatment of the album cover photo is like something from a retro instruction manual. None of that is meant as a criticism, and be assured this is still a Squarepusher album so you’re in for some challenging and experimental music, relatively speaking, not to mention some bangers.
But after the ambitious and challenging Ultravisitor, Hello Everything could be seen as an attempt to go “back to basics”. Not to say the music itself is basic, but if Ultravisitor is Tom Jenkinson following his creative urges as far as they’ll go, leading to some pretty weird and far-out places, Hello Everything reins in those wilder impulses and in a sense, ties everything back together again. So the album almost feels like a Squarepusher retrospective, drawing on elements from all his previous work, rather than expanding into new territory. Kind of like a best of compilation, but one that just contains brand new material.
The result is a compact release, with generally tight track durations and pieces that tend to explore one idea in a succinct fashion. Jazz is applied like a tasteful adornment round the edges, rather than the never-ending fractal improvisations of Ultravisitor. Even the heavier breakbeat tracks are contained and punchy, as if they’ve been lifted out of the dank and murky world that Ultravisitor existed in and placed in a bright-lit room decorated in neon colours and plastic finish.
So let’s get into the details. Opening track, Hello Meow is kind of the Journey to Reedham of the album, opening with a squelchy bassline and brisk, if somewhat tinny beats. It’s a straightforward hook which makes way for one of Squarepusher’s classic uplifting melodies. I talked in my video on Hard Normal Daddy about certain of Squarepusher’s melodies having this “suburban” style, very homely and I guess nostalgic. This feels like an evolution of that, the plasticky synth is retro too and the refrain has this kind of ‘everyman’ feel, which all slots into place with the introduction of xylophones and that familiar old friend, the amen break. And just to make sure we’re definitely listening to a pusher track, we’re treated to a quick bass solo, before the melody gathers itself for the final climax.
Tom flexes the beats a bit harder on Planetarium, with some tightly chopped amens, a menacing bassline and cosmic synth line. The beats are very pleasingly edited but far more restrained and linear than on his previous two albums. It’s as if his aim here is not so much experimenting with the form, but using the results of past experiments to lay down some slick tracks. The melodic component is unapologetically spacey, like the soundtrack to a lavish space opera, and moves with the gravity-defying energy of a craft flying through space. Nothing whatsoever to dislike here.
Bubble Life and Theme from Sprite are two jazzier pieces that fill out the first half of the album. Again far more restrained than anything on Ultravisitor, and far more accessible than the arrhythmic tangle of Rotted. Indeed, the plucked acoustic guitar on Theme from Sprite and jaunty bass put it somewhere between the reflective pieces on Ultravisitor and the funkier end of Rotted, but altogether sunnier and more carefree than either.
The album is divided in two by an ambient piece, Vacuum Garden, which doesn’t do much more than simply split the record and build anticipation ahead of the second half. Circlewave 2 which opens the latter half is presumably a sequel to Circlewave off Ultravisitor. In keeping with the brighter disposition of the album it takes the same elements, drums, guitar, but rather than the mournful, almost anguished tenor of the original, we get a short exercise in dramatic tension.
As an acoustic guitar melody resolves itself out of the suspense, rather than anguished climax there’s a strong sense of relief – a foreboding presence that was somehow bested without the need for confrontation. After the brief palate cleanser of Cronecker King, Rotate Electrolyte feels like the proper start of the second half. Chopped breaks punctuated by a staccato bass drum, flecks of acid bass and rave sirens build a pleasingly menacing atmosphere. Itself a track of two halves, after two and a half minutes Tom switches things up with a soothing pad, and gradually rebuilds the track, with twinkling synths. Like Planetarium, it’s more linear and restrained than recent work, but also far more accomplished than the acid breakbeat jams of Selection Sixteen.
There are plenty of highlights to be found sprinkled across Hello Everything, but easily the strongest track, or the most instantly memorable anyway is Welcome to Europe. The opening acid bass and breakbeat combo is like a slicker redo of Vic Acid off Hard Normal Daddy But it’s the melody that really drives the track, Tom indulging his penchant once again for the cosmic. It soars and swoops, painting a story in the skies like a conductor’s baton. I’m not sure if the title is a nod to Tangerine Dream or other European kosmiche artists, but it gives you the feeling of soaring in a space craft, with the continent below illuminated like a carpet of twinkling lights.
At the harder end of the spectrum, The Modern Bass Guitar could be a track from Go Plastic, the beats don’t fuck around, with a refreshingly robust punch and Tom’s bass guitar is run through a MIDI converter, so his playing triggers computer-generated elements of the track, rather than the sound of an actual bass guitar. Hence the title being a jokey reference to ‘the modern bass guitar’.
Like much of Hello Everything, Plotinus fulfills the promise of Ultravisitor’s synthesis of live instruments and digital programming. Jerky guitar solos jive with jittery breaks in a way that may be more satisfying to anyone who found Ultravisitor too impenetrable and sprawling a record (not me personally).
The record ends in an odd fashion, with Orient Orange, an extended ten minute piece of arrhythmic drums and moody atmospheres. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually played it through, but listening to it again in full prior to this, I can say it undeniably creates a vibe. Moody, sparse, and occupying the same post-apocalyptic space that surrounds Ultravisitor. But it doesn’t sit with the atmosphere of Hello Everything and is an odd way to end things, hence why I usually skip it.
The CD version that I purchased came with a bonus disc, a mini CD containing 5 ambient pieces, Melts 1 to 5. I don’t recall seeing the mini CD format used very often, maybe it was mainly for singles, which I didn’t tend to buy. Basically a 3 inch CD disc that fitted in the inner portion of the CD holder. I probably listened to this particular disc all of once, as the pieces simply consist of extended tones, with no interesting features whatsoever. I wouldn’t even call them drones, as drones at least have harmonic character and tend to have a sense of progression. Which these pieces don’t.
I’m sure I read an interview with Squarepusher back in the day where he proclaimed something to the effect that he’d never choose to make ambient music, as he didn’t believe in the ethos behind it. That it’s music you can put on in the background, which just colours the atmosphere rather than something you pay active attention to. I don’t actually think this is a fair assessment of ambient music and there’s plenty you can put on which is deeply moving and engaging. But also he was probably quite young and potentially taken out of context. Anyway I’d hesitate to call the Melt tracks ambient in the proper sense anyway, yes they’re beatless but they don’t create any sort of atmosphere, other than a sense you might be near some electrical equipment. Experimental would be a better description I guess, but not an experiment worth repeating in my view.
I think Hello Everything makes sense given where it sits in Squarepusher’s discography. In many ways at the time it felt like a step backwards, after the visionary experiments of Ultravisitor. But returning to melody, and in a sense returning to accessibility needn’t be seen that way. And listening to it a lot in preparation for this review made me realise I’d been neglecting Hello Everything somewhat. While I’ll always rate Go Plastic and Ultravisitor higher, there are some absolute bangers on here and it’s one of Squarepusher’s most consistent albums. Also a great place to start if you’re not familiar with his work.
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