3 out of 5

Label: Rephlex

Producer: Chaos A.D.

Pseudonyms are nothing new in the electronic world.  Going out on my usual, unnecessary analytical whim, there’s something ‘faceless’ about being an electronic musician, and besides a technical fascination, perhaps this informs the reason that some of those bips and boopers choose that path.  Unlike Guitar Hero A who records a new album under Band Name B, you won’t / don’t always associate electro beats with a face.  So when we do start to tie the two together – Richard D. James is Apehx Twin, Tom Jenkinson is Squarepusher – the need or desire to break your own mold can be more easily achieved by putting a new name on it.  Now that’s not absolutely what happened for Jenkison with Chaos A.D., as these were early tracks that, according to wiki, Grant from Rephlex heard and the decision was to put them out, but whereas bands would often be tied to releasing early B-sides or whatever under their name, Jenkinson isn’t latched to that concept thanks to his genre and these most certainly are not Squarepusher tracks, so the Chaos A.D. nom de plume was born and Rephlex put it out.

Much of the disc is, I would say, standard IDM / Rephex output – shuddering beats with layers of keyboard workouts scaling up and around things.  But if these are indeed outtakes or early works for Tom, the fact that they come across as polished (you would believe in Chaos A.D. as a stand-alone artist) says something about the direction in which he would take his Squarepusher output.  This amounts to something like every other track – opener ‘Thin Life,’ ‘Mind War Electro,’ and so on, and at 6+ minutes apiece, they’re interesting but definitely allow attentions to wander, hence the overall average impression of the album.  But there are some standouts – perhaps the albums best track, ‘Mess Head,’ nabs the jazzy undertones from SP and does some pretty amazing things with a feedback intro/outro to turn out quite the aggressive number, and down the road ‘Dreaded Pestilence’  and ‘Up the Gary’ take the more harsh stance as well, like dirty cousins from ‘Come to Daddy’ era Aphex.  But just to balance out this goodness we get some obnoxiousness like ‘Generation Shit,’ with a stupid voiceover bit, and the fitting but distracting endpiece to ‘Male Pill Part 6.’  Both of these tracks prevent ‘Buzz Caner’ from being a successful listen all the way through.