Squarepusher’s sonic masterpiece and debut mind-melter of an LP Feed Me Weird Things returns, reissued on double vinyl for the first time since its release on the 3rd of June 1996. Originally released on Rephlex, Aphex Twin himself noted on the sleeve notes of the original that Squarepusher makes “sound like sound never sounded before… Squarepusher gives us the SOUND of SOUND.” Now released on Warp 25 years later, the original album has been remastered from the original DATs and features two extra tracks on a 10" which were first released on the B-side of the Squarepusher Plays… EP and later featured on the original Japanese release of this album. The edition also includes a 16 page booklet with personal photographs, ephemera and notes from Tom Jenkinson, giving us an insight into his early career and into a time of true experimentation and innovation during the mid-90s.
To say it was ‘ahead of its time’ feels unsatisfactory, and almost chronologically inaccurate - the wild array of styles it blends makes Feed Me Weird Things seem to exist in a time and space continuum all of its own. Maybe there really were UFOs over Leytonstone?
Using the nascent energy and wildly experimental drum programming of jungle as its main rhythmic driving force, Feed Me Weird Things is celebrated for the way it was able to blend and cross-pollinate genres so effectively. Jazz, instrumental dub, trip-hop, UK hardcore, ambient synthesis, seventies cop funk and even a kind of mangled bossa nova are all tied magically together, transcending into a sound uniquely his own.
Without delving into the many highlights and moments on the record, it serves as both a snapshot of one of the most vital, experimental periods in the history of UK electronic music and how the young Tom Jenkinson was pushing the boundaries of electronic music, into something well and truly weird, feeding into the canon of electronic music that resonated on into that decade and beyond.
