While OutKast fans await André 3000's next outing with Big Boi, those who relish stranger team-ups have something else to look forward to: a collaboration between André and English techno act Squarepusher. After three years of good intentions, the duo are "edging towards a plan", Squarepusher said, to make something "fucking astonishingly good".
No, Squarepusher is, of course, Tom Jenkinson, a Rephlex and Warp Records artist whose IDM and drill'n'bass has filled more than a dozen albums since 1996. And André 3000 is a fan. "We're both really keen to [collaborate]," Squarepusher told Drowned in Sound this week. He first discussed the idea in 2007, during an interview with the BBC's Culture Show. "But factoring in how busy we are and how shit we are at organising things," Squarepusher said, "it's three years later and it's like, 'Why isn't it happening?'"
"So it's gonna happen," he said. "[Recently] we've talked a few times on the phone and we're gradually edging towards a plan ... My publisher's on to it now, so I think that might mean that it'll happen in the next few years, rather than the next 30 years."
Later this month, Squarepusher will release a new album with his band Shobaleader One. And André 3000 also has his hands full, finishing his first solo album and preparing for an OutKast reunion with Big Boi. Yet Squarepusher is confident that a team-up with one of Atlanta's finest will be worth the wait. "I [can't] think of any vocalist I'd rather work with, and the ideas I've got are fucking staggering."
