Squarepusher - Wendorlan (Scope Vid)

JUL 01 2024 · 12:00

Squarepusher - Wendorlan (Scope Vid) (2024) Director: Tom Jenkinson (as Vic Acid) Era: Post-IDM Revival / Warp Records Neoclassical Period (2024) - Lead single visual for Squarepusher's 'Dostrotime' LP, representing a return to hardware-centric, avant-garde electronic music production after a four-year recording hiatus shaped by pandemic-era isolation. Exceptionally high. This video is a rare documented instance of an established artist creating an entirely self-authored, single-take, analogue-instrument audiovisual work for a major-label single release in 2024. Its selection for Vienna Shorts confirms curatorial value beyond the promotional context. The video's extreme formal austerity, no edits, no cast, no locations, no post-production, combined with its technical rigour makes it an ideal primary source for research into the intersection of music production, audiovisual art, and artist-directed aesthetics within the contemporary IDM canon. Context: Released 23 January 2024 as the lead single for Squarepusher's 'Dostrotime' LP (Warp Records, 1 March 2024), 'Wendorlan (Scope Vid)' arrives at a moment of renewed interest in analogue hardware aesthetics and audiovisual art within the experimental electronic music community. The video was screened at Vienna Shorts festival in May–June 2024, marking institutional recognition of the work as short-form audiovisual art beyond the promotional music video format. The production approach, one artist, one instrument, one take, no post-production, functions as a philosophical rebuke to algorithmically optimised, high-budget visual content, asserting the CRT oscilloscope as both instrument and canvas. The work also reconnects to a lineage of Warp Records audiovisual experimentation including the oscilloscope work made for Clark. Director notes: The Scope Vid was created entirely by Tom Jenkinson under his Vic Acid alias, as credited in the official Squarepusher social media announcement. The video was recorded directly from a CRT oscilloscope in a single unbroken take, using Jenkinson's own custom processing to generate the XY signal from components of the track's audio and control data. No editing, compositing, or post-production effects were applied. The work represents Jenkinson's direct synthesis of music and image as a unified, inseparable artefact, consistent with the Dostrotime album's broader theme of analogue hardware immersion during pandemic-era isolation. The Quietus and Mixmag both documented the production method in their January 2024 coverage of the single launch.