Go Plastic, Nate

There's a delightful head fake at the beginning of Go Plastic. The first few minutes of "My Red Hot Car" suggest that Squarepusher are going to follow the same vein that electronic groups like the Postal Service followed in the early aughts, bringing emotion and human touch to electronic music (perhaps in response to the robotics-first success of Daft Punk or the free jazz explosions of the larger UK Dub / DJ Shadow wave of the late '90s). Then that humanistic element is blown apart in a hail of ball bearings.

Go Plastic is a response to UK Dub, after all, but it goes the other way, moving closer to industrial and atunal executions of what determined men and their state-of-the-art processors can do with breakbeats and metal crickets. The closest analog might actually be DC / NYC hardcore punk, if a genre analogy is needed. There's a lot to be blown away by, but not as much to recommend for someone not already baptized in the waters. Then again, there's something to be said for being tossed into the deep end. Getting pulverized only hurts until you're atomized, and the moments of humanity that squeak through ("I Wish You Could Talk") are all the more beautiful when placed next to the gore.