Squarepusher - Shobaleader One : d' Demonstrator

I've a massive problem with this new Squarepusher album. If it was by the latest fashionista haircut clan i'd feel like throwing fresh dogturds at them (perhaps a little petulant, irrational & brutal...I know). Yet Jenkinson & his mates seem to have wormed their way into my soul & are sitting in there on oriental rugs, smoking dubious aromatic substances & smirking wisely. I can't get rid of the bastards either, they've brought scrabble. And a load of exotic cheeses. This new Shobaleader project takes the euphoric cyber-funk he dallied with on the last album and streamlines it into new chilled pop & electronic rock shapes, revealing itself over time to be both enormously funky and melodically rich. Some of the best tunes on this mini album are relatively downtempo in nature, it even reminds me of Air in places. Except with each listen, the songs become much richer in scope & are highly infectious. There's a distinct whiff of cheese in places but, of course, only the finest brie or Camembert. Things turn sharply towards compressed fuzzrock for the alarmingly wired centrepiece 'Megazine', with its indecipherable vocodered drawl & ceaseless hyperactive beat. The squashed cartoon guitar sound (apparently it's a church organ!!!) on this track is insane, like a fat mutant bluebottle on meth amphetamine! When I first heard it I thought it was absolutely mega-toilet, but now it has my brain overloading with a desire to get up and throw myself around like an idiot. There's so much groove & melody to this record, many innovative moods & themes explored, yet it's a very vivid & (possibly, to date his most) coherent record. Quite futuristic too, as far as "jazz fusion" goes, but then again, undeniably, the man at the helm is a genius. You just have to listen to the structure & arrangement of the tracks to realise that. There is plenty here to keep his faithful, long-suffering hordes happy & to be honest, its been a pleasure to get to know this 9 tracker more intimately as certain closed doors in my mind have been kicked open, maybe for good.