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Feed Me Weird Things

Electronic / Drum and bass & jungle · 1996

Feed Me Weird Things

Squarepusher

Why listen

Played bass and sliced drums reshape one another, producing a sense of motion with several dimensions.

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Tracks · previews

English editorial edition

Album story

Drums splinter while bass lines push towards the front of Squarepusher’s debut. The played instrument and the programmed rhythm do not simply duplicate each other’s movement. They collide, answer and leave unexpected openings, giving the music a spatial excitement beyond the obvious fact that much of it moves quickly.

Tom Jenkinson released Feed Me Weird Things through Rephlex in 1996. Sampling and electric-bass performance meet inside its arrangements. The interesting division is not precision on one side and human warmth on the other. A fingered line can make an abrupt, almost mechanical turn, while an edited drum passage can suggest a spontaneous physical gesture. Both practices unsettle familiar expectations of the other.

Bass takes a melodic role

In The Swifty, bass is more than a marker of the bottom end. Jenkinson has confirmed that saxophonists informed his approach to this particular part. Follow the contour and leaps of the line as well as its plucked attack. The instrument can respond percussively and then occupy a position normally reserved for the principal melody. Those changes make the relationship between instruments more revealing than a simple list of genre ingredients.

Smaller pieces change the scale

Squarepusher Theme and Tundra open with substantial spans, but the programme also makes room for shorter pieces. Smedleys Melody lasts about two and a half minutes, as does Goodnight Jade. The latter’s compact outline precedes the much larger Theme From Ernest Borgnine. Such differences give the album a second level of pacing: the detail inside a beat and the distribution of time between tracks work on separate scales.

Flight acquires another weight

Jenkinson links the Borgnine title to the actor’s Airwolf role and the sensation of flying that the music gave him. The following U.F.O.’s Over Leytonstone suggests a heavier kind of suspension. Kodack and the brief Future Gibbon then complete the original twelve-track sequence. By that point, speed has become one resource among several. Returning to the opening can bring the melodic bass and changing proportions into focus alongside the immediate rush of percussion.

The album through its tracks

Compare the melodic bass in The Swifty with the longer motion of Theme From Ernest Borgnine, keeping the preceding Goodnight Jade in the sequence.

  1. The Swifty

    The third track, approximately five minutes and twenty seconds, brings bass into a conspicuous melodic role. Jenkinson’s acknowledgement of saxophone influence provides a useful route into the part: attend to its contour and leaps, not only its lower register. A sharp plucked attack and a longer phrase can coexist within the same instrument. Follow that line while the drums remain busy around it, then switch attention between them. This reveals exchanges of emphasis that the word complexity alone cannot explain. There is no need to mistake the bass for a saxophone; the attraction lies in hearing how imagining another instrument’s movement can alter the connections between notes.

    Reference · Squarepusher interview by James Hadfield, ele-king (2021)

  2. Theme From Ernest Borgnine

    At approximately seven minutes and fifty-six seconds, track nine creates a broad span out of rapidly moving detail. Jenkinson connects its title to Airwolf and to the sensation of flight, rather than presenting it as an actual television theme. Hold onto a returning figure while the drums divide into smaller events; the larger proportions become easier to grasp. The brief Goodnight Jade immediately before it makes that expansion more striking. Continue into U.F.O.’s Over Leytonstone to compare forward momentum with a heavier sense of suspension. The title offers an imaginative cue, but the movement of the sound can supply its own images without a scene-by-scene narrative.

    Reference · Tom Jenkinson interview by Andy Beta, Bandcamp Daily (2021)

Listen next

Continue with Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James Album to compare two contemporary approaches to rapidly edited drums and melodic character.

Richard D. James Album ↗
References & editorial note

Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.