“I instinctively dislike ‘try hard’ musicians. I pretty much learned my bass rudiments from Led Zeppelin II”: Why Squarepusher is an artist in a vast left-field league of his own

It's nothing personal – the uncompromising bassist/programmer known by a select few as Tom Jenkinson is just cautious. After all, your particular musical notions might unduly alter his current creative trajectory. That an artist with such a clear vision is wary of outside influence is just one of many paradoxes surrounding Squarepusher. 

His mish-mash of bebop, electronica, and avant-garde is some of the most challenging music out there. Amid an onslaught of electronic bleeps and breakbeats, bass solos blow by so quickly you barely have the chance to glean their rhyme or reason, but catch a few of Jenkinson's bop-flavored melodic flourishes, and you'll realize he is one of the bass world's brightest talents, and he certainly has a story to tell. Problem is, he doesn't really care to share. 

As a bass player, Jenkinson is a reluctant star, a brilliant technician disinclined to demonstrate his skills. Blurring the lines between organic and synthetic sound sources not to mention the boundaries between any number of musical genres – he loves to keep people guessing.

It’s fitting: a bass guitar wizard reluctant to reveal his powers, an electronica legend loath to tell his tale. What follows is a rare glimpse behind Squarepusher's guarded veil.

The following interview from the Bass Player archives took place in March 2007.

How did you learn to play?

“I taught myself when I was ten. The classical guitar was the first instrument I owned, but it was really an introductory point – the first instrument to have resounding significance for me was the bass guitar. That was a year later.”

What was the first bass you owned? 

“It was a Gibson EB-O copy made by Kay. The neck was warped, the intonation was permanently way out of tune, it sounded horrible and played awfully – I loved it! I used to take it into school and draw pictures of it on my exercise books, and I even made paper cut-out versions for my toy action figure to play.”

What do you try to accomplish with your music?

“One of the more difficult technical challenges that I have undertaken in my career is making the sound source of a particular musical part ambiguous – making it hard to tell whether it was played by me or some sort of machine.”

“On Hello Everything, for example, The Modern Bass Guitar was tracked playing my bass through a MIDI converter. So, the sounds being controlled by my bass guitar are actually generated by computer programs. As such the title is an oblique joke about the character of the modern bass having nothing to do with its inherent sound-making capacity.”

How does your compositional process work?

“My working process was established a long time before I had the chance to release a record. I've been making music in roughly the same fashion since I was 17. I am militantly self-sufficient in this regard, even to the potential detriment of my music; I just don't want other people involved.”

Why not?

“The only way I can stay true to my aim is to insulate myself from outside influences. That is not to say that I am not interested in people's opinions of what I do, but those people tend to be my friends and family, not big-time musicians or music industry types. I just don't want external opinion distracting me from my experiments.”

“I never look at record sales figures, to ensure that I have no idea which albums people liked or didn't like. I am not really that interested. My opinion is that it is best to generally ignore what everyone other than my friends and family thinks about me and my music. There really isn't enough time to care.”

Who are your influences?

“I have had many influences, not all of them musical. The sounds of everyday life can be as fascinating as any piece of music. I particularly enjoy the sorts of sounds that can be made with large pieces of metal-striking a metal handrail, or the sounds that railway tracks make just before a train arrives at a station.”

Who are the bass players you most admire?

“There really are so many good bass players. Typically my favorite bassists are those who have done something un-bass-like. The first bass player I really identified as doing something beyond the typical bass player fare was John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. I pretty much learned my bass rudiments from Led Zeppelin II. The way he played complex parts with a relaxed approach was immediately appealing; I instinctively dislike ‘try hard’ musicians.”

“Another early favorite was Cliff Burton from Metallica. He was a real eccentric player – those early records are peppered with his strange melodic decorations, in particular the bizarre solo piece Anesthesia, which seemed to combine biker rock with gothic harmony and industrial noise.”

Describe melody, as it relates to your music.

“Out of my first few albums, the pieces that seemed most popular were the ones in which I had invoked an emotion-provoking melodic aspect, but the fact that it seemed a clear-cut door to success led me to a conundrum.

“On the one hand I could capitalize on this ability and keep generating more popular records, with the disadvantage that I was negating my free exploration of musical possibilities for the sake of success. 

“The alternative was to abandon the concept of melody, thereby necessitating exploration of new ways to construct music and enhance creative momentum, with the possible risk of terminating my career if nobody turned out to agree.”

What has your approach been, then?

“Rather than trotting out melodic ability ad infinitum, I've suppressed it to see if I could somehow bring about new methods of musical resolution to replace my time-honored ones associated with melody. 

“After Big Loada in 1997, my attempts were to make music that generally did use a method of rousing melody to generate a musical focal point. There were times when I capitulated on this aim – for example My Sound and Lambic 5 Poetry, but I was starting to think about conventional melodic content again.

“The criticism would be that in watering down these ideas, they change fundamentally and are no longer the same ideas. Regardless, they are represented more comprehensively on other records, and I hope albums like Hello Everything can offer a less intimidating gateway to these.”