2 out of 5

Label: Warp

Produced by: Tom Jenkinson

Two songs.

That’s sort of what you’re getting on this mini-album.  Which isn’t to say the other tracks aren’t valuable, or that we can’t appreciate the hour long live set as a second disc, but ‘Do You Know’ just doesn’t stitch together very well – it feels very random – and that bonus disc feels like a half-hearted apology for the lack of a better listening experience.  (Unfortunately some of the same issues extend to that disc…)

It’s understood the Jenkinson, as a long-standing member of the IDM elite, has worked hard to prove that he’s not just filling a niche – that he wasn’t Aphex Twin, and that he wasn’t going to stick to the jazz breaks of his early releases.  By the time we get to this album (and the ones before and after it), Tom was pushing that concept such that his output felt more like cobbled together singles instead of a conceivable whole.  Albums like that can work, but the range on ‘Do You’ is so varied and so _against_ approachable sequencing that it defeats attempts at getting your groove on.  It starts with how it starts: the title track single, which, unfortunately, highlights Jenkinson’s snarkier side and comes across rather lazy, like a cut-and-paste example of IDM, but with flat production.  Followup F-Train isn’t too grabbing, disassembling vocals beatlessly for four minutes, until we get to the pair of Kill Robok and Anstromm-Feck 4, which finally feel like the artist is working up a sweat.  The combined seven minute runtime is all too brief, though, especially when backed by the experimental noise of Conc 2 Symmetriac and the nigh-11 minute Mutilation Colony.  The disc ends with a shoegazey, pretty straight-forward ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ cover, which is one of those tracks that’s been done a few too many times to tack on a non-flourished cover at the end of a non-flourishy album.

Over on the live disc, while the tracks are culled from disc one and the previous Go Plastic album (which was similar in tone), the chosen songs are a better overall package than the album proper, using pieces from the wandering Mutilation Colony as a build-up to BPM explosions, which are then maintained – perhaps for the dancey sake of the audience – for the remaining hour.  Alas, while the recording is clear, it doesn’t really have any highs or lows, and a dynamic sound range is pretty valuable for _most_ music, but especially those genres – hip-hop, electronic – where repetition is generally part of the game; stripped of that, the songs here aren’t very distinctive beyond the noise they make and Tom’s occasional requests for the audience to yell.

‘Do You Know Squarepusher’ isn’t short on a display of Tom Jenkinson’s skills, but it doesn’t care much about being listened to in a sitting.  Even sampled song by song, though, except for a couple of flashes in the album’s middle, this isn’t the most inspired Squarepusher release.