Track Listing

1. My Red Hot Car
2. Boneville Occident
3. Go! Spastic
4. Metteng Excuske V1.2
5. Exploding Psychology
6. I Wish You Could Talk
7. Greenways Trajectory
8. Tommib
9. My Fucking Sound
10. Plaistow Flex Out

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28249 in Music
• Released on: 2001-06-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Album Description
Go Plastic is the record that folks have been waiting for...a more agro, technologically oriented outing. The incredibly catchy leadoff single, My Red Hot Car is revisited in a mind-bending 2-step workout, Lee Scratch Perry style. Dub and drum 'n' bass elements weigh in heavy on this release. Breaks rush at the speed of light tethered by some of Squarepusher's moodiest, melodic work. 10 tracks. 2001 release.

From URB Magazine
After 1998's Music Is Rotted One Note, Tom Jenkinson (aka Squarepusher) could've become a respectable middle-aged curmudgeon. In years of creating impertinent, freeform drum & bass-y music, he heard enough funk and musique concrète to tap his own keg of post-rave Bitches Brew. Like Yesterdays New Quintet, Rotted was weird enough to escape dad-jazz revivalism but had the craftsmanship to merit the jazz comparisons. With bass guitar-triggered samples, vintage keyboards and live drumming, the track "Don't Go Plastic" was as good an example as any of his mature, anti-pop fusion.

The first single off Go Plastic is "My Red Hot Car," a mutant two-stepping pop song. I think "I'm gonna fuck you in my red hot car" is how the hummable chorus goes, then it gets all pleasantly jungle. With the single out of the way, it's time for Jenkinson to get shit-faced drunk enough to forget all the jazz and pop nonsense, hop in that hot car and go roaring at 180 BPM in reverse through a demolition derby of dubby murk, buckling rhythms and oil-slick-rainbow melodies.

It's a mix of contemporary hardcore and vintage Squarepusher where he never lets things settle, scrabbling away with sublime ("The Exploding Psychology"'s G-funk whine) and obnoxious (the static scream of "Greenways Trajectory") results. "Remember who's the fucking daddy," says a voice on "My Fucking Sound"; a mental note that this sludge-pit of fast, ragged, round rhythm, shit and noise (call it jazz, drum & bass or hardcore) is forever Jenkinson's territory.

Daniel Chamberlin

Customer Reviews

A return to form . . . sort of.
I have been anxiously awaiting a new Squarepusher album for quite some time now (has it really been almost 3 years since the last proper Squarepusher album?). I should take a moment to describe the sound of Squarepusher, or at least the sound of Squarepusher on this record, since Tom Jenkinson has managed to sound quite different across his albums as Squarepusher. For the most part, Squarepusher specializes in extraorinarily rapid drill 'n' bass; i.e. frenetic electronic music (although on recent eps there has been more of a focus on what I'd call "disturbed ambient jazz"). There is a reason that one of the songs on this record is called Go! Spastic.

The real question is: Is this album a return to form? Personally, I really liked the Big Loada/Hard Normal Daddy-era Squarepusher, when his music was drill 'n' bass with an almost insane amount of melodic and rhythmic structure. After releasing Music Is Rotted One Note, an ode to jazz fusion that was certainly interesting but was not too much like anything he'd done before, many (including myself) worried that the heavily electronic days of Squarepusher were over. This isn't to say that Music Is Rotted One Note is a bad album; it is a good, if somewhat navel-gazing, album. However, as an electronic musician Jenkinson has definitely pushed the boundaries of idm/drum 'n' bass/or whatever label you'd like to slap on what he does so uniquely. His most recent release, an e.p. called Selection Sixteen, was (to my taste, at least) highly disappointing, so the question became: What will the next Squarepusher album be like? I don't think it's overstating the case to say that this is one of the most anticipated albums of the year.

So: is it a return to form? I would say yes and no. First, it is a very good album, and furthermore it's absolutely, totally insane electronic music (i.e. it's not Music Is Rotted One Note, part 2). In fact, most of the music on this album heads well north of 200 b.p.m. The complex drum programming of Big Loada-era 'pusher is in full effect here. Jenkinson is truly a master of molding sound into twisted and amazing rhythmic pulses. Also, My Red Hot Car is firmly in the Aphex Twin vocal stylings mode; that is, it's goofy and profane, as well as being a great song.

However, this is not a complete return to previous Squarepusher styles; but then I guess it doesn't have to be, since we'd eventually get bored if he made rehashes of Hard Normal Daddy every time he released a new album. In particular, the music is more spare melodically than before; there is much more space for the drum and rhythmic programming to run crazily rampant all over the place. Frankly, I am not sure whether this is good or bad; really, it probably depends on your view of Squarepusher and his music. One thing that's for certain, though, is that this album is an impressive landmark in the career of one of the finest electronic musicians around.

my new favorite Squarepusher album
Lately, Squarepusher has been outdoing himself with every release (with the exception of Do You Know Squarepusher? - a hit-and-miss EP). This is my new favorite album of his. He is the only electronic artists who can stimulate my mind as much as some of the best jazz musicians. True to jazz, most of this album's drum tracks never repeat themselves - and at the frenetic jungle-like pace he sometimes achieves, I can only wonder how much time and effort must have gone into it (and that's just the drum tracks! Influenced, I'm sure, by hearing his dad play).

Squarepusher often utilizes effects and modulates the sounds he uses as much as the notes themselves as an output for his musical genious (with just as much spontenaity, intelligence, and creativity), taking his art to the next level. Even though I'm playing this album for the 30th-40th time, I still hear something new with every listen. He really takes advantage of the electronic music production environment and crafts his work to perfection.

A few of the tracks don't stand incredibly well on their own (this is no pop album), but they fit beautifully into the whole of the work. This is truly an album - when I listen to it I listen from beginning to end (with the exception of My Red Hot Car, which is a good way to introduce friends to the crazy world of Squarepusher).

If you like Squarepusher for his jungle-jazz side, this is the epitome of his greatest work - the fusion of his earlier head-nodding hardcore and drum-n-bass with his later adventures in spaced-out-acid-jazz and avant-garde synthesizerings. It is hard for me to write a review of this man's work with out using a bunch of hyphenated or made-up words, because there is no genre - no generic name - for the music. It is Squarepusher.

Back in top form!
I have always regarded Tom Jenkinson as a true musical genius, one of the few. His early work like "Feed Me Weird Things" and "Hard Normal Daddy" blew the roof off of drum & bass conventions with its frenetic beats and insane attention to detail.

Quality control went out the window with some of his more recent EPs, with the exception of the genuinely interesting "Music is Rotted One Note" release. And now, after a long hiatus (a welcomed one, to be sure), he has returned with "Go Plastic," easily his most accomplished work to date.

The tracks here not only reprise all areas of his backcatalogue (including some of the more caustic moments of Chaos AD) but also manage to combine them with a lot of the newer, crazier electronics of artists like Richard Devine and Otto von Schirach on the Schematic label. However, it is Jenkinsons's prowess as a musician that propels his tracks into a whole different zone from any of what else is happening in electronic music. "Greenways Trajectory," "My F*cking Sound" and "Boneville Occident" are amazing in their construction, not just in programming and technique, but in overall songwriting form; they take you on a full-blown journey.

After sitting through "Go Plastic," most likely you'll be glad it's over... and even need a few moments to recover! And then turn it on all over again.