JUST A SOUVENIR

I'm mainly familiar with the work of Tom Jenkinson(Squarepusher) from the 1990s. This album was a surprise for me. Apart from the odd song here or there, I haven't heard a full album of his since 2001. Just A Souvenir is sort of a concept album about a concert by an imaginary band. This non-existent band must love punk and metal, because there is a lot of it here.

There are a few short songs here with acoustic guitar. A couple of songs with vocoderized vocals. As usual with this guy, he plays everything and samples and manipulates his own playing. "Star Time 2" is disco-fusion. Very upbeat and accesible. Halfway through there is nice keyboards. The beats eventually drop out and there is some lovely keys. "The Coathanger" sounds like a cross between Jaco Pastorius and Daft Punk. Vocoder vocals.

"A Real Woman" is the only song that I had heard previously. This is a punk song with vocoder vocals. It has a poppy chorus. Then jazzy bass after every chorus. "Delta-V" is straight up punk metal. Halfway through it reminds me of Ruins. "Potential Govaner" sounds like its skipping at first. It stops the skipping when the jazzy guitar comes in. Jazzy bass solo. "Planet Gear" is more punk metal. This time there is some keyboards. It gets more funky and jazzy later then goes back to the punk metal part.

"Tensor In Green" is even more punk metal. Also some keyboards. After a minute there is a guitar solo. Another one after 3 minutes. "The Grass Road" is the longest, proggiest and best song on the album. Starts with vibraphone. Goes punk metal with jazzy guitar. Then hardcore punk. Then jazz metal. Then a symphonic prog style guitar. Some nice keyboards follow. Vibraphones again. Back to symph prog guitar. Hardcore punk again. Back to vibraphones. The last minute or so is just ambient sounds. What a song!

"Duotone Moonbeam" is almost trad jazz. "Quadrature" has some beautiful chords. Very accesible and catchy. Lots of synth effects throughout the song. Good live drumming too. Jazz guitar solo. Then classical guitar with classical bass dueting. Back to jazz guitar. Great song. I was pleasantly surprised with this album. Not exactly what I was expecting. Although not extremely proggy by any means, this is a great modern album. 3 stars.

Although Tom Jenkinson (AKA Squarepusher) is well versed in both jazz fusion and drumnbass, by the time the year 2008 has rolled around his restless creative spirit has left behind the confines of those two genres, as well as any other genre known to man. 'Just a Souvenir' uses elements from Jenkinson's past as a jazzy drumnbassist, but also works in a plethora of other genres including disco, progressive rock, metal, computer game soundtracks, punky new wave and Japanese anima soundtracks. All of these musical styles are effortlessly woven together in songs that defy easy categorization and sound like something only Jenkinson could put together.

If there is one unifying factor to all of these songs it is this purposefully cheap and tacky overly digital production that would usually sound annoying, but works surprisingly well on this set of ultra-futuristic pop music. The drums in particular sound thin and plastic on purpose, like an 80s computer game, likewise a lot of the metal guitar work sounds like those early guitar samples that always sounded so obviously fake. All of this plastic sound is part of Jenkinson's grand design for this album and just adds to its exotic appeal. I think there is also a lot of humor at work here, especially when the cheap tacky drums start working out furiously on a thrash beat.

This is an excellent album that defies easy description and also makes a case for Mr Jenkinson as one of the most original and independent musical minds of the new century. Like Sun Ra and Les Baxter from the previous century, Squarepusher fuses elements that most would not dare to combine. If there is ever a genre called drumnbass-progmetal-exotica, this album will be the first.