Time & Perspective Quote by Tom Jenkinson

There is a particular kind of flex that only works if you sound like you’re not trying, and Tom Jenkinson nails it here. “But I don’t really listen to much be-bop at all at the moment” reads like a shrug, yet it’s quietly loaded: a preemptive correction to whatever story the listener is trying to tell about him. Because when you’re Jenkinson - better known as Squarepusher, a producer whose work often gets bracketed as jazz-adjacent electronic virtuosity - people want the tidy genealogy. Fast bass runs? Must be bebop. Frenetic complexity? Must be Parker and Dizzy in the bloodstream.

The intent is less about dismissing bebop than refusing to be pinned down by it. The phrase “at the moment” is the key. It makes taste sound seasonal, pragmatic, almost tactical: he’s not announcing an identity, he’s updating a playlist. That casual temporariness pushes back against the way genre discourse turns influence into destiny. It also signals an artist’s working method: listening as input, not allegiance. If you’re building tracks, you might be absorbing drum programming, metal, musique concrete, video game soundtracks - whatever solves today’s compositional problem.

There’s subtext, too, about how audiences fetishize complexity. Bebop becomes a shorthand for “serious musician,” a credential people reach for to validate electronic music. Jenkinson’s line deflates that neediness with understatement. He’s saying: stop auditing my authenticity; I’m making things, not submitting citations.