's debut album was released by 's label in 1996, and its sleeve contains liner notes written by himself, recalling the first time he stumbled upon a live set by this bass guitar-wielding bloke behind the DJ booth at a local pub. While suspicious at first, he was soon swept away by his sheer audacity in marrying nimble jazz guitar licks to high-speed mutated breakbeats. captured at a formative early stage, following the release of early EPs for obscure labels like and . While his earliest efforts under his own name were closer to noisy acid techno, he flipped to fusion-influenced jungle with his mind-blowing 1995 EP for as . "Squarepusher Theme" introduces the album with clean guitar melodies, gliding basslines, and crashing, stuttering drums, all perfectly in sync and rolling along together. 's next album, the lauded , would explore this sound more thoroughly, but he still had far more ground to cover on his debut. The very next track, "Tundra," is the sound of terror, heartbreak, and destruction. The opening synths are harrowing, and when the breakbeats crash in, you feel like you've hit rock bottom and there's no way to recover. One of the most emotionally devastating pieces of music ever made. And then three tracks later is "Smedleys Melody," an alarmingly goofy trifle with drums slivered into 128th notes over a puckish melody, ending with a bunch of grunting and meowing noises. How such contrasting emotions can be allowed to exist on the same record is anyone's guess, but is skilled enough that his zany moments are as well-executed as his profound ones. Other highlights on the album include the deconstructed splatter-dub of "The Swifty," the acid-laced emotional rush of "Theme from Ernest Borgnine," and the sweet ambient comedown "Goodnight Jade." has arguably made better records over the course of his career (and certainly he's made more consistent ones), but showed the world that he was capable of doing things nobody else had dreamt of before, and it still holds some of his all-time best material. ~ Paul Simpson