Ultravisitor is the seventh studio album by English electronic musician Tom Jenkinson, under the alias of Squarepusher. It was released on 8 March 2004 through Warp Records. In September 2024, Jenkinson announced a remaster of the album to commemorate its 20th anniversary, as well as an expanded and remastered edition of Venus No. 17, which was released on 25 October 2024.
Background
The album incorporates many of the various musical styles exhibited by Jenkinson on his previous albums, including drum and bass, acid techno, jazz fusion, and electronic noise. A few of the tracks feature layered, modulated, or filtered bass guitar.
In an interview with I-D, Jenkinson confirmed that most of the tracks on Ultravisitor were recorded from shows in the UK, US and Canada. "The point of using live versions of the tracks is that they show stupid people that, though their own stubbornness prevents them from being able to engage with my music, they hear other people cheering in the background, and realise that although this music is obscure, it cannot be totally inaccessible because other people like it."
Jenkinson has stated that the track "50 Cycles" took over a month to complete; "I think the most time-consuming was 50 Cycles on Ultravisitor. Roughly speaking it took a month to make. This was the last piece to be completed on Ultravisitor, which contains several other pieces that also took unprecedentedly long to complete."
Release
Ultravisitor was released on 8 March 2004. It was released on standard and special edition CDs, as well as on 2xLP. The special edition of the album came with a hardbound case and six page booklet. Jenkinson has stated that "Ultravisitor is my spectacle of beauty and of terror. It is unknowable, and will never be understood by anybody, least of all its creator.
Anniversary Edition
On 19 September 2024, Warp Records announced that the album would be remastered and reissued to coincide with its 20th anniversary. The reissue was released on 20 October 2024, on 2xCD, 2xLP and streaming services.
Reception
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Ultravisitor received an average score of 74, based on 21 reviews, indicating a score of "generally favorable".