Some people reckon that Squarepusher is slightly mad, others say it’s just a façade. With his latest, and most surprising long player done and dusted, Richard Hector-Jones asks will the real Tom Jenkinson please stand up?

Deep in the underground corridors of Middlesex’s Northwick Park Hospital a young long-haired man is spending hours positioning a disembodied dog’s head on the body of a small Japanese girl. Just out of range of this nightmare image another slightly scruffier man, strapped tightly into a straitjacket, is relaxing in a wheelchair powerless to escape while a photographer forces him to writhe and contort in pursuit of that perfect portrait. Further down the corridor a couple of smartly dressed women offer sandwiches and sticky cakes to anyone in the vicinity. Finally in the midst of this torment a service lift opens revealing the afternoon’s crop of recently deceased folk into the underground passageways. Tin coffin after battered tin coffin comes into view of the subterranean onlookers. Porters then quickly wheel them off towards the morgue to a disturbing soundtrack of squeaking wheels.

“Morbid acid,” offers Tom Jenkinson looking up from the wheelchair. Whatever that means.

As far as video shoots go this rates pretty high on the weird scale. But then again, the ideas being realised here are coming from video director Chris Cunningham, the person responsible for the visual accompaniment that goes with Aphex Twin’s ‘Come To Daddy’ record. You’ve probably seen it. Gangs of little children all with Richard James’ face running around a housing estate terrorising the old. Perhaps then this is all just par for the course after all. It’s not sadists – simply location scouts that’ve sounded out this curious set.

All weirdness has been carefully constructed... but only up to the frankly disturbing moment where real corpses invade the fantasy. But it’s just a disused wing of an otherwise bustling hospital. It stands to reason that folk should die here.

Tom Jenkinson, better known as Squarepusher, is less than willing to do interviews for his new album set for release in October. He’s aware that insecurity will force him, out of some misplaced debt to journalists, to construct theories and motivations for his music that simply aren’t there. He wants to leave his new record, the first he’s completely comfortable with, for the listener to unravel and he thinks the best way to do this is to not talk about it to the press.

Still, in spite of this, and the fact that he can be a stubborn interviewee if caught on the wrong foot, Jenkinson today, sitting on a stripped-down hospital bed, is articulate, reflective and more than willing to answer questions about himself and the many theories and motivations that inform and disguise his music.

Along with friends (and one-time peers) like Aphex Twin, Luke Vibert, and Mike Paradinas, Tom Jenkinson leads the new wave of electronic pioneers who through a combination of self-determination, unwillingness to compromise, and restless musical talent have redefined the role and perception of the modern musician in a way that infuriates people in roughly the same ratio that it inspires them. They are the new wave of bedroom boffins, uber nerds raised on Vic 20s and ZX Spectrums and stubborn sarcastic freaks too steeped in irony to be taken at face value – or journalists might have us believe.

“That’s just the media picture of people like myself and Aphex,” he retorts. “The retiring home-studio mutant. That’s because our only link verbally with most of world is through the press who like to paint you as a weirdo just because your music’s a bit ‘off it’. But it’s not true. I’m into living my life completely. My inspiration comes purely from going out, talking to people, riding my bike and seeing stuff. And as for irony I can’t be arsed with it. This decade is so full of ironic perspective that it’s hard to be genuine and when you are, you almost feel stupid and embarrassed!”

Lurching round the video shoot doing nothing in particular (a quick cameo role on a TV monitor is all there is to be seen of the ‘star’ in the US bound ‘Come On My Selector’ video), Tom Jenkinson is an odd character, sure, but far from being a weirdo he’s at worst just a little idiosyncratic in his behaviour. It’s probably his excitability that puts people off. If you don’t get a defined pop star ‘cool’ it’s easy to be taken aback.

He stands tall, somewhat awkwardly even, and is prone to firing off daft and meaningless sentences to anyone willing to spar with him in absurdity. Strangely, it’s a talent he seems to share with many of his aforementioned contemporaries. Today his chosen verbal partner is video director and recent(ish) friend Chris Cunningham who’s more than willing to take on the role as they knock into each other à la two Stooges – high-jacking wheelchairs like hyperactive kids desperate to let off steam. It’s a sight watching this ‘hot shot’ young blood video director goofing around with one of the country’s most interesting electronic musicians to the despair of a generally po-faced professional film crew. ‘It’s not a laughing matter’ might be the consensus of opinion around Tom and Chris. But it is, particularly bearing in mind that since the completion of promos for Aphex and Madonna’s ‘Frozen’, Cunningham has been turning down a flood of offers ranging from folk as diverse, in both quality and style, as Meat Loaf, Marilyn Manson, and Massive Attack. And that’s just the Ms.

Tom Jenkinson claims to have always been around music. Raised in Chelmsford, Essex he and his two brothers grew up to the sound of their dad’s record collection, primarily a dub and reggae experience. Not jazz as you might expect judging by Tom’s ever evolving arrangements complemented by his fluid bass playing skills. “My dad pretty much sorted me out with my musical nurturing,” he reckons. Obviously, it’s not something you think about when you’re a child but early experiences like this have an effect on you that you never escape.”

From these beginnings Tom, like countless other kids grasping for an as-yet undefined musical direction, became involved with numerous “rubbish bands” including a short-lived thrash metal outfit called Sub Zero. It beat playing with Action Man he says.

To the first-time listener Tom’s music to date might be a bewildering experience. Breakneck drum’n’bass ignored by purists but shot through with a justifiably shameless musicality based primarily around razor-edge percussion and bass. A restless energy and attention to detail mean his previous albums ‘Feed Me Weird Things’ and ‘Hard Normal Daddy’ stand out as examples of fierce cutting-edge modern electronic music that seem timeless partly because of their apparent disdain for the constraints of both fashion and convention.

The new album, the one he won’t talk about, is, however, far removed from both previous records. Its music made almost from the opposite direction. Gone is the meticulous drum programming to be replaced by looser live tracks performed by Jenkinson himself. These new foundations are then worked on with his bass and keyboards to create a dark fusion sound that’s more mature, closer to bis idea of pure expression, and destined to challenge (alienate even) a proportion of his audience.

“When I go to a record shop and hear loads of mediocre records,” he offers by way of explanation for his sound, “it makes me go fuckin’ mental inside. Music’s the most beautiful thing in the world, the thing that can take you out of yourself and show you new shit that isn’t part of the objective real world, and yet we’re surrounded by all this mediocrity!”

He continues, even more animated than before: “I’ve heard people say you can sell a thousand copies of anything, which means suddenly that musicians aren’t musicians any more they’re simply people who can just about blag it. I’m not saying you should study music for X amount of years to do it but just shunting round other people’s ideas is fucking sad.”

So, is this what has in the past motivated him towards creating often dauntingly complex music? Is it his challenge to the part time mentality of today’s musicians?

“Maybe a part of me is doing it for that reason,” he concedes. “But in the bigger picture I’m just trying to shout myself out of this murk of mediocrity that surrounds us all. You have to when a bit of plastic’s the only thing that represents you in the world!”

Shooting any film is a long and tortured process but the girl/dog shot, which will only take up about a second of the final product, is dragging on interminably. Things are starting to fall behind schedule. There’s constantly some minute detail stopping Cunningham from being satisfied with the scene. Everyone’s getting restless. Everyone except for the dog, that is, who just sits there on top of the beautiful little actress’s head, wearing a doctor’s lab coat, like it’s perfectly natural doggy behavior. Another hour like this and everyone is going to have to remind themselves that it isn’t. It’s time for a break so Tom and Chris shuffle off to the catering bus out in the hospital car park. Chris seems ill at ease with direct sunlight. Tom orders his vegetarian lunch and conversation turns back towards music.

With the ‘trial by dodgy school metal bands’ period long since over, it was in 1992 that Squarepusher started producing sounds that were more representative of his true musical personality. His first released music was on the tiny Spymania label, a company run by old school mate Paul Fowler. This was a lucky break for Tom in that the traditional ritual of sending out demo tapes to labels had unfortunately for him yielded no takers whatsoever. Soon after this he hooked up with Richard James, one of the few producers he was genuinely in awe of. In awe because, as he reveals during the interview, meeting Aphex dissolved the notion of celebrity that lay in his mind.

“You find out pretty quick that most people are normal,” he explains of his friend. “Celebrities that aren’t, and live in their own fantasy world, are pretty sad usually because they’ve destroyed their own personalities simply because they can’t handle being themselves.” This union resulted in the release of Tom’s debut album ‘Feed Me Weird Things’ on the Aphex-related Rephlex label. The record sold slowly and steadily, mainly by word-of-mouth recommendation, and it is partly for this reason (i.e. the possibility of quiet untainted success) that Tom is not overwhelmed by the music industry obsession of ‘doing press’ for his new album ‘Music is One Rotted Note’.

“People are too chicken or lightweight to let their records speak for themselves,” he believes. “I’m not desperate to sell loads of records right at the start because I like idea of letting things grow. I don’t think I’m egotistical but if you know in yourself that you’ve got something, a vibe, then eventually people will discover it. I really don’t think you have to play the industry game quite as closely as people do. My own game plan doesn’t really have any rules other than don’t stitch yourself up and don’t be a fucking victim. You see all these stars straining to stay within the pop personas they’ve set up for themselves. It’s really wretched that people can become so desperate to be accepted.”

But surely that’s pop stars through and through?

“Probably, but reinventing your personality seems fucking brutally scarey to me. All you’ve got is your own history. How tragic would it be if you didn’t really know who you were the day you died?

“But I do wonder sometimes why I really started all this in the first place,” he continues somewhat tangentially. “I wonder if I did it to make music or to be a success. Maybe five hundred years ago I’d have wanted to be the best warrior catching and skinning animals. But now I see that the best way for me to survive is as a musician. Maybe it’s a genetic thing; that making music makes me more successful and attractive which in turn means I’ve got more chance of fucking women and passing on my genes. It’s a weird thought and one that I can’t totally dismiss.”

It’s a good theory to bounce around, perhaps better aired late at night amidst a smokey haze, but it falls more into place when Tom reveals that his years at school, a feverishly bookish time by his own admittance, led him towards a fascination with the philosophy that goes hand in hand with scientific development.

“I love reading up on that sort of stuff,” he says in earnest. “How science changes us as well as the future. People say how can you be bothered to read shit like how a computer works but to me it all feeds back into us changing the personality of being human. The idea that my making music can in some way relate to passing on my genes is fascinating to me.”

DJing in a small upstairs club in Manchester to a packed crowd a lurchingly drunken Squarepusher tries to incite rioting, microphone in hand, with screams of: “C’mon you cunts! Fucking rave!”. The soundtrack to this torrent of abuse is a barrage of old hardcore tracks and furious pre-95 drum’n’bass selections. The incident is funny, sure, but shot through with a purposefulness that wants to shake the people present into rallying against mediocrity and psychic inertia. It’s not a time to theorise, particularly with half a bottle of tequila down your neck, it’s a time to rail against stuff. Anything.

“I find it weird how easily people stop functioning and making an effort. I know so many people that came straight out of college and went straight on the dole, not made any attempt to get a job or anything, and somehow it seems alright to them. You know, you use a bit of nous to keep the dole off your back and before you know it you’re not getting out of bed any more.

“People think I’m on some kind of mission but all I’m saying is: ‘Let’s just do something mental.’ My experience of life is that you create your own options. You can create something out of nothing if you want to. I’m not trying to set myself up as an example but if you believe you are worthy you can do stuff and create your own luck. That’s all there is to it.”

Two incidents: 1) At a late-night post-club lock-in Jenkinson is introduced to Tom Rowlands from The Chemical Brothers. Rowlands offers his hand in a traditional polite gesture of greeting. Squarepusher attempts hopelessly to do a back flip ending up floundering on the floor.

2) A Jockey Slut year-end round-up and Tom Jenkinson is sitting in a room with Norman Cook and David Holmes wading through the year’s most significant releases. His method of introduction to Fatboy Slim comes in the form of a swift crow’s peck to the top of the head.

None of this is traditional behaviour for ‘cool’ pop stars. But then again Tom Jenkinson isn’t cool. It seems sometimes that he often does his utmost to prove that point. If people choose to see this as ironic or a ‘so square it’s hip’ mentality they are missing the point. Tom Jenkinson, like anybody else, has the capacity to be a complete dickhead. But pin him down on music, the only thing it’s truly fair to judge him on, and he’s a completely different, near untouchable, figure.

“You have ideas, you get in the studio, the ideas disappear, and things just start to flow,” he says. “The songs then exist in space somewhere between you and the machinery. Like with the ‘Big Loada’ record, I wanted to write the rushiest, fastest, breakbeat music I could think of that you could still sort of relate to; that still had some relation to funk but remained right at the edge where it could almost become a meaningless piece of twat shit music.

“You end up pulling the music out of nowhere,” he concludes, “not thinking what you’re doing. Then when you come out of it you have a souvenir of your time in this psychic space, a place where you are intuiting everything and not even thinking or worrying about things · like chords and notes.”

Tom and Chris again meet up, after a few hours apart, for a last-minute photo call on a neon lit hospital bed. The ‘underground pop star’ looks like an unkempt shambles; a square who doesn’t get out much. The video director to his left, the envy of the industry no less, looks just like a down and out, a junkie with sickly pale blue translucent skin. This pair, to some people, are the stars of tomorrow.

Earlier in the day Chris Cunningham confides that he and Tom attempted a meeting to discuss the making of the ‘Come On My Selector’ video a couple of months back. It lasted about ten minutes because they felt stupid and embarrassed talking business.

They got stoned instead.