Squarepusher - Ultravisitor (2LP)

By the time Ultravisitor landed in March 2004 on Warp, Squarepusher had already zigzagged through drill’n’bass pyrotechnics, jazz fusion detours, and head-spinning sound design. This one felt like a statement piece, a long and unruly self portrait that folds live recordings into studio trickery until the seams vanish. You can hear room tone and crowd chatter slip in around the edges, then suddenly you’re inside a pin-perfect edit with sub-bass punching like a club system. It plays like an artist showing every facet at once, all within a set that runs close to 80 minutes.

The title track lays out the thesis. It opens patiently, with guitar and bass phrases that feel almost pastoral, and you think you’re being eased into something gentle. Then the rhythm engine whirrs into impossible shapes, snares fracturing into microbursts, bass lines tumbling over themselves with that signature Squarepusher elasticity. It’s shapeshifting but not random, more like the way a live improviser takes themes and flips them in real time.

Ultravisitor’s trick is how it keeps that tension between stage and studio alive. Tetra-Sync is the touchstone for the bass heads, a knotty piece that lets Tom Jenkinson’s hands-on virtuosity run the show. Harmonics ping, tapped figures cascade, and the whole thing feels like a set piece captured with mics up close, audience ghosts lingering in the background. Then a track like Iambic 9 Poetry shows his other side, all velvet chords and downy drum programming, a fan favourite for good reason. It’s tender without losing the weirdness, the kind of tune you play late at night when the house has gone quiet.

50 Cycles is the curveball I still grin at. Its processed vocal mantra and strobing low end turn a simple idea into something hypnotic, as if he built a sculpture out of a single blink of electricity. Elsewhere, he reaches back to his jazz instincts, letting the bass speak in full sentences while the percussion darts in and out like a drummer trading fours. The sequencing matters here, because the softer pieces let the fiercest edits hit harder, and the most chaotic passages make the lullabies feel properly earned.

For listeners who came in through Go Plastic or Hard Normal Daddy, Ultravisitor can first feel like a sprawl, but that breadth is part of the appeal. It pulls lines between his early Amen science, the organic one-man-band vibe of Music Is Rotted One Note, and the melodic clarity he’d lean into later. Reviews at the time often called it ambitious and unruly, and they were right, though the unruliness is the point. It reads like a live set that keeps mutating, not a tidy playlist.

If you’re hunting for Squarepusher vinyl, this album shines on wax. The low end breathes, the quiet passages have space around them, and the shifts between live ambience and clinical detail feel more tactile across multiple sides. Ultravisitor vinyl isn’t just a collector’s tick box, it’s the format that flatters the music’s dynamics. For crate-diggers wandering a Melbourne record store on a Saturday, this is the one that jumps out between the Warp spines, the sleeve practically humming. And if you’d rather buy Squarepusher records online, there are solid reissues floating around alongside original pressings, with plenty of other Squarepusher albums on vinyl to build out the shelf.

There’s also a little cultural time capsule here. Early 2000s Warp was in a playful, expansive mood, and Ultravisitor fits that era’s curiosity. The way it blurs live and studio still feels fresh, with Jenkinson treating crowd noise as another instrument, not a gimmick. He once talked about presenting the sound of Squarepusher in its totality, and this record gets close. It’s impatient, generous, occasionally indulgent, yet threaded with melody and a sense of play that keeps you coming back.

Nearly two decades on, I still reach for it when someone asks where to start with Tom Jenkinson. Not because it’s the simplest entry point, but because it shows the full toolkit. You get the fireworks, the lull, the human touch of fingers on strings, and the alien precision of his programming. That combination is rare, and on the right system it’s a rush. For anyone browsing vinyl records Australia wide, Ultravisitor is the kind of LP that rewards a quiet room, a strong coffee, and enough time to let its strange logic click into place.