Pushing the Squares.

• Author: McKissack, Fred

In the world of modern music, the toe-tapping, head-bobbing, girl-fainting songs of Ricky Martin are tops on the charts. It's OK, really--even expected. Every generation has an overly hyped pop idol to lose sleep over. For me, it was Duran Duran. In the seventies, who could forget the gritty reality-based thoughts of Andy Gibb? Or Leif Garrett? Or Shaun Cassidy? And for every Ricky Martin yang, there is a yin. So, here's Square-pusher.

No giddy, fashion-conscious denizen of diehard corporate pop, Brit Tom Jenkinson--the "Squarepusher"--will probably never be a household name. Indeed, he's just the sort of fringe performer who remains the idol of fans who would slit their throats rather than read Rolling Stone and would abandon Squarepusher as a sellout if the rest of the world ever caught on to his groove (note REM).

Before this excursion into the underground, you need to know that Jenkinson is part of the British jungle/drum and bass scene, with its heavy, bone-rattling bass mixed with rapid-fire, high-hat drums, bathed in electronics and sampling beats from other records. It's quite an intoxicating concoction, but the big beef is that it's too repetitive. The assault on your senses is too brutal.

Squarepusher has moved from throwing down stellar jungle mixes to producing sound masterpieces that seem to be too complex for any of us to really understand. In short, he's a smarty and he knows it, but he isn't resting on his laurels.

In the spring, Jenkinson released a seven-song mini-CD, Budakhan Mindphone (Nothing Records). Even if you don't understand or, for that matter, want to understand electronica, the drum and bass movement, and its ties to jazz, go and get the CD. Pop it in. Be amazed. Spread the word.

I was fortunate enough to hear Budakhan Mindphone for the first time while driving home from the south side of Chicago along 47th, heading for the Dan Ryan Expressway. "Iambic 5 Poetry" was the first song on the CD. I have no idea what his thoughts were while creating this magical piece, but the song captured the mood of inner-city blight and economic depression, of shaky buildings and shaken people, of Chicago and London, of jazz and jungle and musical extremes. Jenkinson's mix of "real" instruments--ironically, drums and bass electronics--and DJ technique created one of the more haunting melodies in recent memory.

For all the reality-based melodrama in "gangster" rap, very few of those songs have come close to creating this sort of...