Three years on from the release of Ufabulum, insanely inventive writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Squarepusher finds himself delving into the darker side of electronic music on Damogen Furies. Sometimes uncompromising, and others gleefully unhinged, album number 14 is the product of a decade’s worth of hacking and tweaking hardware and software, with everything recorded in one take. Straddling nightmarish drill ‘n’ bass and Miles Davis-era jazz, Damogen Furies is a hugely exciting and rewarding exploration, which rages against the machine that is present day commercial dance music.
The album starts strongly with ‘Stor Eiglass’, which fuses abrasive beats to a melody reminiscent of The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’. Elsewhere, the jazz and house mash-up, ‘Kontenjaz’, is an exciting listen, while the stuttering, sci-fi tinged ‘Baltang Ort’ lives up to Squarepusher’s promise to chart the “visceral capacities of electronic music.” Better still is ‘Baltang Arg’, which could soundtrack a fight between Super Mario and a Hammer Horror villain. Like Damogen Furies as a whole, it’s a tune that reaffirms Squarepusher’s status as a peerless sonic innovator.

Key Track - 'Baltang Arg'