Squarepusher

Thomas Russell Jenkinson (born 17 January 1975), known professionally as Squarepusher, is an English electronic musician, record producer, bassist, multi-instrumentalist and DJ. His music spans several genres including drum and bass, IDM, acid techno, jazz fusion, and electroacoustic music. His recordings are often typified by a combination of complex drum programming, live instrumental playing, and digital signal processing. Since 1995, he has recorded for Warp Records as well as smaller labels, including Rephlex Records. He is the older brother of Ceephax Acid Crew (Andy Jenkinson).

Early life Tom Jenkinson was born and grew up in Chelmsford, Essex, England. In 1986, Jenkinson went to the King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford. One of his formative musical experiences came from seeing guitarist Guthrie Govan playing in the school's inter-house music competition. He developed a lasting friendship with Govan.

In 1991, Jenkinson became interested in house music, hardcore, acid house and techno. He cited hearing the track "LFO" by LFO as an early influence.

Initially considering a degree in physics, Jenkinson enrolled as a Fine Arts student at the Chelsea College of Arts in London. After receiving a student loan, Jenkinson instead spent the money on musical equipment, including drum machines, a mixer, and an Akai S950 sampler.

Career 1993–1995: Early career In August 1993, Jenkinson recorded a piece named "O'Brien"; with his friend, Hardy Finn, he raised enough money to release it with additional material on a vinyl 12". Jenkinson and his friends took the copies of the record to various local record shops but found reactions disappointing. In late 1994, Jenkinson began pursuing his fascination for integrating breakbeats into electronic music. At this time, Jenkinson was becoming obsessed with bringing a "dark psychedelia" to drum and bass (which would eventually reach its zenith with Go Plastic from 2001). By 1995 he was playing live sets, including a performance at Eurobeat 2000 at Turnmills in 1995, and "O'Brien" was part of his setlist.

The first recordings using Jenkinson's new setup were released on the Spymania label. Two EPs, Conumber and Alroy Road Tracks, were released in 1995 under the pseudonyms Squarepusher and The Duke of Harringay, respectively.

It was after a gig at the George Robey where Jenkinson met Richard D. James, known professionally as Aphex Twin. The two became friends, and they agreed to release Jenkinson's first album on James' own label, Rephlex Records. Jenkinson sent James a compilation on DAT of forty tracks recorded from 1994 to 1995. James selected twelve of these tracks to form Squarepusher's debut studio album, Feed Me Weird Things, which was released on Rephlex in June 1996. Jenkinson accepted the five-album record contract with Warp in December 1995. However, the album also contains some abrupt diversions into quite different musical territory, evidenced in what Squarepusher calls the "Industrial Psychedelia" of "Chin Hippy" and "Rustic Raver".

Squarepusher's electric bass work becomes apparent on this record. He states that he was "still battling with the influence of (Jaco) Pastorius." He wanted to "make the styles interrogate each other, such that one track would question the premises of another and vice versa. As such I suppose it might indicate tentativeness, but in my mind at the time I liked the idea of bringing musical assumptions into question by smashing stylistically divergent elements into each other". In this he follows a precedent set by Frank Zappa, who Squarepusher claimed is "always hovering in the background" for him. Following the success of the first piece of music, entitled "Sad Robot Goes Funny", Squarepusher went on to compose four more pieces for the robots, which comprise the EP Music for Robots, released in April 2014.

On 20 April 2015, the album Damogen Furies was released. All the recordings on Damogen Furies were recorded in one take and were made using software that Squarepusher programmed himself, specially designed for spontaneous and streamlined live performance. The release of the album saw him headlining his "biggest ever" show at the Troxy in London, as well as headlining the White Stage at Fuji Rock Festival, Japan, his first appearance at the festival since 2001.

In 2016 and 2017, Squarepusher once again took his Shobaleader One band on the road. In March 2017, the band released their first live album Elektrac, featuring versions of past Squarepusher songs. Also in 2016, Jenkinson also wrote a suite of short organ pieces to be performed by James McVinnie for "The Secret Life of Organs", a UK tour celebrating the country's great organs as the first 'synthesisers' invented centuries before their electronic counterparts. A recording of this performance would later be released as the collaborative album All Night Chroma in September 2019.

In 2018, he provided the ambient soundtrack for the CBeebies hour long wind-down programme Daydreams, narrated by Olivia Colman. The same year, Jenkinson broke his wrist in Norway and was forced to temporarily stop playing guitar. The incident caused him to re-explore instruments he had previously played in the 1990s, which informed his subsequent album Be Up a Hello. Jenkinson was also influenced by the death of childhood friend Chris Marshall, to whom he dedicated the album. Be Up a Hello was released on 31 January 2020, preceded by the singles "Vortrack" and "Nervelevers". The album marked a return to Squarepusher's drill 'n' bass and acid roots.

On January 21, 2024, Squarepusher sent out an email to his subscribers on the Warp Records email list, linking to a download for a WAV file named "XY.wav". Plugging the WAV file into an oscilloscope and plotting the signal as an XY plot would reveal the word "Dostrotime", the title of his next album. Dostrotime was released on CD, LP, and digital download on 1 March 2024. The single "Wendorlan" was released to promote the album.

In February 2026, Squarepusher released "K2 Central" as the lead single to his album Kammerkonzert, which was released on Warp in April 2026. The album incorporates elements of orchestral music, including harpsichord, glockenspiel, and a string quartet. Political commitment 2016: MIDI SANS FRONTIÈRES In July 2016, in response to the Brexit vote, Jenkinson composed the song "Midi Sans Frontières" and released it for free, inviting anyone to remix the track and release it themselves. The project was "an attempt to challenge the toxic legacy, namely the legitimisation of racist and xenophobic attitudes in the UK, generated by several leading campaigners in the UK's referendum on membership in the EU," Jenkinson wrote in an accompanying essay, "It is not offered as a substitute for progressive political action but as a complement to it. I put it forward in defiance of the bigotry threatening the fragile connections that exist between us all. I hope it will be an opportunity to reaffirm some of those connections amidst a very disturbing situation." All people were invited to collaborate using the stems, sheet music, and MIDI files provided by Squarepusher, with the only stipulation being that, to be listed in the site's archive, any work had to be titled "Midi Sans Frontières". In the following months, nearly 300 remixes were listed on the site.

Discography Albums YearTitlePeak positions UK BEL (FL) US Dance 1996 Feed Me Weird Things — — — 1997 Hard Normal Daddy 115 — — 1998 Music Is Rotted One Note — — — 1999 Selection Sixteen — — — 2001 Go Plastic 100 — — 2002 Do You Know Squarepusher 192 — — 2004 Ultravisitor 90 — 9 2006 Hello Everything 89 — 16 2008 Just a Souvenir — — 17 2012 Ufabulum 101 83 14 2015 Damogen Furies 110 96 8 2020 Be Up a Hello 77 70 — 2024 Dostrotime 85 141 — 2026 Kammerkonzert — 103 —

EPs, singles and promos YearTitleNotesPeak positions UK — — 1995 Conumber E:P Released on Spymania. Partially compiled into Burningn'n Tree. — — Alroy Road Tracks Released on Spymania under the alias The Duke of Harringay, later compiled into Burningn'n Tree. — — 1996 Bubble and Squeak Credited to Tom Jenkinson. — — Dragon Disc 2 Split EP with Dunderhead, credited to Tom Jenkinson. — — Squarepusher Plays... Both exclusive tracks ("Theme From Goodbye Renaldo" and "Deep Fried Pizza") appear as bonus tracks on the Japanese release of Feed Me Weird Things. — — Port Rhombus EP Also compiled on the US version of Big Loada on Nothing Records 182 — 1997 Vic Acid Single 156 — Big Loada Also released on Nothing Records in 1998. 134 — 1998 Remixes 12" Released under the alias Chaos A.D. on Rephlex. — — 1999 Budakhan MindphoneEP 183 —Maximum Priest EP EP — — Anti-Greylord Protection Scheme Prelude EP, included with most copies of Selection Sixteen — —I Am Carnal, And I Know That You ApproveCollaborative EP with Richard Thomas—— 2001 "My Red Hot Car" Single, reached number 1 on the UK Budget Albums Chart. — — "Do You Know Squarepusher" Single for the album of the same name; no titles appear on this release, just the song "Do You Know Squarepusher". — — 2003 "Ultravisitor" Single for Ultravisitor. — — 2004 Square Window EP — — Venus No. 17 EP 103 — 2006 "Welcome to Europe" Exclusive digital single No. 1: released 4 September (Also available on Hello Everything). — — "Hanningfield Window" Exclusive digital single No. 2: released 18 September. — — "Exciton" Exclusive digital single No. 3: released 2 October. — — Vacuum Tracks Released with certain editions of Hello Everything. — — "Welcome to Europe" 12" vinyl single. — — 2009 Numbers Lucent EP — — 2010 Shobaleader One: Cryptic Motion Single by Shobaleader — — 2012 "Dark Steering" Single from Ufabulum — — 2013 Enstrobia Bonus EP with Ufabulum special edition — — 2014 Music for Robots EP with the Z-Machines — 171 2020 Lamental EP EP following Be Up a Hello — —2024"Wendorlan"Single from Dostrotime——

Other Burningn'n Tree (1997) - compilation Buzz Caner (1998) - as Chaos A.D. Solo Electric Bass 1 (2009) - live Shobaleader One: d'Demonstrator (2010) - as Squarepusher Presents: Shobaleader One KCRW Session (2012) Elektrac (2017) - as Shobaleader One All Night Chroma (2019) - with James McVinnie; as Tom Jenkinson

Remixes