Bleep Years day nine: Squarepusher's Love Will Tear Us Apart (2002)

 Here's the latest of my Bleep Years in which I try and compartmentalise my life using tracks that represent specific years. My little grid is filling up nicely.

2002: Squarepusher's Love Will Tear Us Apart

The thing about being Mancunian is you get to live on a smug cloud of weed smoke and Hacienda dry ice whilst looking down on all the inferior people with their inferior musical heritages. Are you from Dagenham? Loser. South Woodford? Bah. Hammersmith? Nottingham? North Weald? What have they got that Manchester lacks, apart from being the birthplaces of the various people in Depeche Mode?

Squarepusher is roundly the greatest exponent of jazz drill 'n' bass that has ever lived, unless there's an especially impressive performing troupe of B&Q staff members I don't know about. My Sound was the first track I fell in love with, and his Shobaleader One project had its highlights too.

Love Will Tear Us Apart is the only cover version in my Bleep Years list, and its a contentious one because any true Mancunian would have throttled him with a hooded top for attempting this. However, the icy claustrophobia Oh Square One lends this track is quite beautiful.

And I can see myself in a Revolution bar, DJing in an alternative electronic room at a night called Backslider with some very lovely people, letting this track infect the airwaves of commercially-minded soul and pop fans. Happy days, good friends, and total DJing freedom. A year when Manchester was vibrant and alive and so much more than its history.