The one thing you can say about Tom Jenkinson is that he’ constantly moving. That jittery nervous ADHD energy that he infuses his music with is equally apparent in his stylistic pursuits. One moment he’ offering deconstructed jazz, the next two-step and jungle or whatever they call drum’n’bass now days, the next fucked up sound art or off kilter jazz, and the next it’s an amalgam of all of the above. It all sounds so carelessly slapped together, yet it’s impossible to not recognise his craft.
Hello Everything keeps the door open to all of the above yet finds Jenkinson moving away from any of the noisier big beat orientated chaos of recent years into a more intimate idiosyncratic bedroom approach. In the main the melody is king. The beats aren’ the chaotic crazed bludgeoning we’ve known in the past and resting above them is the gentle slap of his bass or more often than not dexterous jazzy little synth runs. It’s actually, wait for it, kind’ve cute. Bubble Life in particular sounds amazingly like a chilled out take from his debut Feed Me Weird Things except that he’ slowed it down, got all these weird sound art sounds bouncing around and he’ whipped out the acoustic guitar and synth ghosting the bass. And it’s beautiful, bopping around without the bluster. He’ populated the album with xylophones and acoustic guitars, real percussion alongside his programmed beats, and it’s all quite low key. There are a few of his strange atmospheric sound art constructions but these never give way to menacing electronics as they have in the past. In fact Hello Everything is almost like all those hidden gems he sprinkles intermittently across his various albums, all compiled on one cd, which may lead to accusations that he’ looking backward rather than forwards. Regardless it’s definitely less confused than previous outings yet it’s still infused with that fidgety Jenkinson genius that we’ve all come to love.
