Watch Squarepusher's New Video: "Dark Steering"
Electronic music virtuoso and jazz bassist extraordinaire Squarepusher has released the video for “Dark Steering,” the first track to be taken from his upcoming album Ufabulum.
“Dark Steering” sees Squarepusher — Tom Jenkinson — taking a heavier direction than recent releases, although the psychedelic aspect of albums like 2009’s Numbers Lucent seems to have remained, with the new track featuring a distinctive acid-squelch bassline that builds into a wild, spacey jam, full of jittery rhythms and the kind of experimental bass twists that Jenkinson has become known for.
Jenkinson’s light shows to accompany his live performance have been steadily evolving over the years, and the video for “Dark Steering” (featuring footage of Jenkinson – we presume – sporting Daft Punk-esque LED headgear), seems to be the culmination of work in this area, using elements of his new visual show, which was recently demonstrated to selected audiences in the US and UK.
Speaking about “Dark Steering,” Jenkinson claimed he wanted to recreate a combination of the “exhilaration, terror and sadness” that he experienced in apocalyptic nightmares about nuclear missile trails in the sky. “It lead to the idea of a spacecraft leaving earth at vast speed to escape, but oddly the music also made me think of it flying through a library. So I generated the visual aspect such that, as the piece progresses, it seems as if the viewer is ever accelerating through massive corridors of books.”
Squarepusher will be playing a series of festival dates over the next three months, including Sonar festival chapters in Sao Paulo and Barcelona, Bloc Festival in London and Melt Festival in Ferropolis, Germany.
Ufabulum will be released on Warp Records on May 14 in Europe and May 15 in North America.
