Vinyl is a fragile medium. That starts with the amount of music one can press into its grooves. When Tom Jenkinson released an EP in 1994 under the name Stereotype, parallel to his Squarepusher debut Feed Me Weird Things, it had to fit nearly an hour of music onto a single 12-inch. It’s easy to imagine that the result didn’t sound ideal. And although almost everyone was releasing CDs at the time, this one remained limited to a vinyl run of just 1,000 copies. Now there’s another chance to rediscover it — this time with a bit more breathing room for each track.
Unlike on his Squarepusher albums, Jenkinson seems to have set aside his bass here, giving more space instead to the acid squelch of the Roland TB-303. His drum machine hints at a roughened four-to-the-floor rhythm; drum’n’bass in the sense of sped-up Amen breaks is merely suggested — only on the closing track »O’Brien (Darkness)« does it become explicit. Above all, Jenkinson takes his time with the architecture of these unusually long pieces; »Whooshki«, running over sixteen minutes, feels like a no-nonsense epic. His production approach is stark and minimal, varying just enough to keep the balance between repetition and stimulation intact. An unexpected journey.
Stereotype
