This piece was originally published at Consequence Of Sound in May 2015.
The sun was still out when Squarepusher took the stage, one he shared that day with Plaid, The Orb, and Tricky, among other mostly hip-hop and electronic acts. Then in his mid-20s, the shaggy Englishman named Tom Jenkinson mugged for the Coachella crowd and for himself, swigging Absolut straight from the bottle and scratching at his scraggly bearded visage. Arguably the most difficult artist in the entire lineup, he leered at the audience from behind his gear, taking particular delight in the noisiest passages, sounds trampling other sounds underfoot. Though his album Go Plastic was still two months away from release, they cheered when the unreleased track “Boneville Occident” temporarily downshifted from frenetic drill ‘n’ bass to something closer to distressed hip-hop, the exhausted “Amen break” sighing toward an unattainable normalcy. All eyes were on him. It was 2001.