Go Plastic - Squarepusher
Metascore
70 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 17 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 17
  2. Negative: 0 out of 17
  1. The album is a parasite, a pollutant, and should be kept well away from children and old people.
  2. Go Plastic fuses the insanely intricate beat programming of Feed Me Weird Things and Daddy with the abstruse experimentation of 1998's Music is Rotted One Note. It's the best of both worlds. [Aug 2001, p.98]
  3. Few electronic artists working today have the balls or the skills to pull off an album as unconventional and uncompromising as Go Plastic...
  4. 80
    In anybody else's hands, a blending of techy aesthetics and near-tender melodies would be a musical oxymoron, but in Squarepusher's, it is delicious.
  5. Fast and furious with moments of melodic intimacy, it is music for the intelligent and adventurous.
  6. What's striking is that he's less wacky than he's ever been, instead pursuing a rougher, more complex sound. [#208, p.66]
  7. 60
    Quite an experiment in not only the limits of drum 'n' bass, but listenability as well. [Jul 2001, p.81]
  8. The album is short on the wistful melodies and jazz overtones that have made Squarepusher stand out from his fellow post-everything experimentalists, making Go Plastic -- notwithstanding "My Red Hot Car" -- something of a disappointment.
  9. 60
    It's all clever and overstuffed with ideas, guaranteed to bug dance-music purists just as much as it annoys their parents. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]
  10. Tom Jenkinson shares Aphex Twin's mischievous way with a beat but lacks his respect for melody. [Aug 2001, p.141]
  11. 60
    An album which makes his previous excesses seem conservative.... Dazzling though this bombardment is, it's a draining experience. [Jul 2001, p.97]
  12. 60
    It's a mix of contemporary hardcore and vintage Squarepusher where he never lets things settle, scrabbling away with sublime and obnoxious results. [Sep 2001, p.152]
  13. Go Plastic exhumes the corpse of stuttering, fast-paced percussion and arbitrary programming that was bled dry and buried in a time when the Y2K bug still signified economic collapse and nuclear meltdowns.
  14. The album disappoints. [#32, p.58]
  15. The glassy-eyed micro-manic bass-'n'-breaks belligerence on show-offy tracks on this Squarepusher longplayer is either tellingly tired or terrifically tiring, with Jenx's wicked licks of brown-note boogie either spuriously slow in the foot or a swift kick to the collective ass of a collectively ass-kissing musical community.
  16. For sheer virtuosity, you gotta hand it to the guy - he sure can make a lot of really weird noises. But who cares?
User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 14 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. JayW
    10
    it's just so amazing ,a great D'n'B album ever made
  2. chrisMed
    10
    Now that I have had the past half decade to familiarize myself with all of Tom's work and have deliberated endlessly about which of his works is his greatest. I have little doubt left that this is truly his masterwork. Do You Know SP? had a better "single" leadoff track but this album had it all. Awesome lead track, some of his craziest work ever and really the best collage of tracks from any of his albums. There are just no duds on this one like there are occasionaly on all his other albums... not a missable moment here. Track to track there is also a lot of variation and probably something for every experimental electronic fan. CHOICE Full Review »
  3. DonaldO.F
    10
    imho the best album ever by mr T.J.