Consensus on this album?

>pushes squares once

Not alot of squarewaves

This weirdy-beardy has done a few genuinely startling tracks, and is generally quite amusing. What galls is the sheer arrogance and temerity of Squarepusher and other similar "drill and bass" dilettantes --they actually believe they are improving on jungle!!! All that Squarepusher has brought to drum & bass is some Jaco Pastorius bass-frills, a dys-funk-tional rhythmic convolution, and a quirked-out daftness that recalls nobody so much as Primus. On a purely technical level, nothing that Squarepusher does with breakbeats surpasses engineer-poets like Hype, Aphrodite, Dillinja, 4 Hero or Danny Breaks, to mention only the most obvious leaders-in-the-field. It is only Squarepusher/Plug etc's distance from the scene that allows them to convolute the breakbeats beyond any use-value to DJ or dancer; the wilful incongruity of the samples is all well and good, but if junglists use the same old gangsta/cyberpunk soundbites and apocalyptic textures, it's because they're trying to create and sustain a vibe, a feeling-full and meaningful mood that crystallises a certain kind of worldview and life-stance. By comparison, drill and bass is vibe-less non-sense. The drill and bass/"fungle" concept seems to exist to make a certain sort of "margin-walker" feel okay about not really having engaged with jungle as a subculture. And of course, as with most soi disant progressive iniatives, drill and bass is utterly parasitic on its populist counterpart--do you really think the idea of chopping up breakbeats would have independently occurred to the weirdy-beardy technoids in a million years?