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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.On the eve of the release of his Hello Everything album, Squarepusher aka Tom Jenkinson answered questions posed by Collective members. On Music Process.1. Hols_444 asks: In recent interviews you appear warmer. Has age has lifted the strain and pressure of the creative process? Does your high stature allow you to relax a little? Or is the pressure to explore even more always a factor? I'm more curious about the personality behind music. Squarepusher: Luckily for me the creative process has never been a strain. Possibly because it wasn't a strain, it ended up being my main activity. Who deliberately seeks discomfort? As far as high stature goes, if I was to take that at all seriously I'm sure it would make me anything but relaxed! One of the reasons why I rarely conduct interviews is that one is often required, in a short space of time, to give a coherent account of current states of mind and the like. Possibly that is easy for some, but I find the task difficult to do with any sense of completeness. In addition to this, as I have no desire to fuel any sort of romanticisation of my personality, there seems to be no significant incentive. As I perceive it, the main reason that people ask questions concerned with the personality of a composer is to try to form some sort of background against which the music may be contextualised. It may be the case that a musician's state of mind at a given time will have fed into the work. The problem is that in this domain we are in danger of conducting a science so soft as to be formless. This, at least in the context of publicity, is what constitutes the lack of incentive for me to bother starting even some sort of sketch. The links from personality to music-making are there for sure, but to make sense of them will require more than anecdotal descriptions of states of mind and folk psychology - something like a “phenomenology of music”. In lieu of a proper understanding, the music media seems very ready to generate hype and intrigue around musicians, based on the more sensational details of a musician's life. Indeed, it seems to me that a proper understanding may not even be desirable for most listeners. This relates to the uncanny aspect of music to transform the listener's state of mind. To establish some sort of deeper understanding as to what happens when our moods are transformed by music may in some way be seen as a threat to the elemental enjoyment of music. It may be said that it debases musical experience to try to reduce it to theories. Yet all folk interpretation of music apes proper theory, however inaccurately.  2. Stickfigure8 asks: I've been making electronic music for six years and playing the guitar for 11 years. Do you have any advice for people making electronic/computer music? Squarepusher: Offering advice to a general audience is difficult; I would prefer to tailor it to individuals. If there was a generally worthwhile thing to say it would be to simply stick to your inclinations. Heed advice with the utmost caution (this piece notwithstanding!). People can get very opinionated about music, but the strength of the opinion does not ensure its validity. Your own opinion is the only one you will ever be fully acquainted with - why not follow that? If you follow it singularly and wholeheartedly, you will soon know what you (and it) are made of. 3. Mrkvm23 asks: I'm curious in general about the process of putting together a Squarepusher album. Do you have a direction or theme in mind when you start an album, or does it sort of grow into being along the way? Squarepusher: At certain points I have set out criteria to govern and inform my music-making process. For example, shortly before I started making the material collected on Music Is Rotted One Note, I said to myself that, as of that time, I would stop using sequencers and samplers. Thus the pieces were guided by a basic technical principle. There were also other principles at play at this time relating to harmonic content. One was that I was to abandon the overt usage of melody. This was because I had come to see it as a cheap way of getting people to like my music. It disgusted me that it was so easy to appeal to people and I thus introduced arbitrary rules to make it harder. Other records/eras have had similar or very different rules and guidelines associated with them, yet others have come about in the absence of any arbitrarily set guidelines.  With that in mind, I suppose that my work over the years exemplifies a variety of different approaches and varying degrees of stringency in terms of any rules that I might have set at the time. One of the more basic approaches to album compilation I have used is to order pieces in such a way that they are always differentiated by the pieces they are preceded and succeeded by. I have hoped that this basic tactic would help me along the way to keeping the listener alert and attentive. I have thought lately, however, that although this tactic may be useful to an extent, it may also compromise the listening experience for some people in that it is difficult to perceive a narrative running through the album. This idea of a narrative is quite a persistent one in conventional attitudes to music. I have personally preferred very complex narratives in the past. I very much like the idea of a non-linear narrative, such that a story may unfold dramatically differently to the conventional beginning-middle-end idea. One of my ideas in the past for album compilation has been to select pieces that have subtle resonances with each other; for example you, are quite possibly reminded of a part of track two by a part of track eight. In that way a story can unfold in differing ways; possibly sideways or according to the image of a maze or a spiral. In any case, it is an attempt to critique that very pervasive western idea of a linear narrative progressing and accumulating meaning over time. Nonetheless, with the conventional CD format one is stuck with the method of its operation, ie, running from start to finish. Even if the content is designed to jump around continually so that the experience is extremely disconcerting, the CD still always has a physical beginning and an end by virtue of its file structure. Thus it is impossible to fundamentally escape this “beginning to the end” concept. This is fine as it’s the image or suggestion of a maze I want to evoke, rather than work with a format that is itself a maze. Thus the image of the maze or spiral springs up from the solid linearity of the CD format. The complexity is grounded in simplicity. We need stability to conceive of complexity.  page two
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Read members' comments related to this interview.
comment by Accidentalist
Dec 6, 2007
I wonder if you have any 'intentions'?
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