Album: Squarepusher, Shobaleader One: d'Demonstrator (Warp)

Tom Jenkinson has been moving jazzwards for a while, with releases such as his Solo Electric Bass live recording and the broader-based Hello Everything shifting away from the computerised sample-bricolage approach of his earlier albums.

Here, he presents himself as the leader of a band, Shobaleader One (which, as with the notional "group" of 2008's Just A Souvenir, may exist only in his imagination) on nine tracks marked by auto-tuned vocals and a numbing affection for the kind of wheedling jazz-rock synth riffs favoured by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It starts out okay – Plug Me In is bubblebath techno-soul, and Into The Blue has a pop consciousness akin to Röyksopp – but the album's latter half is awash in stompy jazz-rock noodling and leaden fuzz-synth riffing, reaching an unbearable Gothick cacophony on the concluding Maximum Planck.

DOWNLOAD THIS Plug Me In; Into The Blue