Let's start strong -- all these years later, 1997's Hard Normal Daddy is still widely considered his defining record. "Beep Street" is far and away my personal favorite track from the record, and quite possibly even his entire catalog. It's hard to believe that the drums here came from a box; the programming is otherworldly and milks every drop of emotion from the velocity accents. I like to imagine that this particular drum machine might have been less like a Roland and more of a pair of robotic arms holding real drumsticks banging away on a real snare, much like the infamous Yellow Drum Machine. (Unfortunately I have no idea what it actually was, because I forgot to ask him. Oops!)
If you ask me, the copious amounts of love showered on Hard Normal Daddy come at the direct expense of the equally wonderful Hello Everything, which was my first Squarepusher experience in 2006 and is a fantastic if foreboding showcase for the maturity his programming skill assumed during the intervening decade. Lead single "Hello Meow," presented here as part of a live performance at the London club Koko, is pretty much a circus act of frivolous synth patterns until Tom's formidable bass skills up the dramatic flair in the second act.
It's easy to overlook "Iambic 9 Poetry" because it's one of the most serene things he's ever recorded. Don't. In a drastic departure from the usual tightly-wound drum loops and stuttering edits, he builds a quiet little moment of introspection from bass harmonics and live percussion that sounds like one of his breakbeats is drifting off into naptime.
Tom points to "Tetra-Sync," a live track included on 2004's Ultravisitor, as some of his heaviest DSP work; my MacBook looks like it's about to barf up a kernel panic over here at the mere thought. The surprising thing, though, is that the song still doesn't feel all that foreign, largely because the screwball sounds periodically take detours into more familiar chord sequences, and all of it is accompanied by basslines played on a non-theoretical instrument that actually has strings.
