Venetian Snares - Fool The Detector

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

5...according to our Brian on Fri 09 Mar, 2012.

You gotta love this man's press releases. the mind of Aaron Funk is a wild, alarming place indeed. Sometimes I wish he'd just keep his thoughts to himself, then again I'd be always hankering for an outburst of sickoid eccentricity then. This new EP sounds pretty “sick”. You know, them kids, the kids they have these days, they keep on coming out with inappropriate phrases for things. Like “sick”. How can sick mean excellent? If I was sick in their stupid gormless faces they wouldn't go, wow that was excellent would they? If you don't know what VS sounds like by now then you're reading the wrong review. I once asked Phil what the 'Snares sounded like back around the millennium, I was intrigued as he had an album dedicated to his cats which is quite wonderful to my mind. Phil said “Oh he makes horrible, horrible music, you'll hate him”. I had to get involved then. His stuff is actually reasonably more accessible these days if mega-spazmodic hyper-edited glitch “rhythms”, staggering broken gabba beats and insane digital mindfuckery is your idea of a night out with chums or indeed, a quiet evening in with the lady. Some may say he's an idiot. The majority, however, acknowledge he's a production genius and undeniable game-changer who refuses to compromise his extreme sound. This is actually shaping up to be a total classic 'Snares EP, the first three tracks much more along the lines of his classic mentalist razor-sharp shit than the subdued abstractions of 'Cubist Reggae', there's a poppier, more playful undercurrent to some of it though. 'Index Pavillion' on the other hand is a beautifully dark neoclassical-based piece that initially harks back to his work on 'My Downfall' and the much-adored 'Hungarian' album. It builds up into the realms of “demonic ragga-vomit mental” for a while, like totally berserk, then ends with some more brief foreboding strings. If I still bought this style of music I'd be running home right this minute, kicking old ladies and children out of my way in eagerness to slap this on my turntable, that's how good it is. But I'm too soft these days. I know a great deal of you aren't though, this is one of the most impressive records I've heard so far this year and there's been a fair few...

Venetian Snares, aka Winnipeg's Aaron Funk, follows up last year's acclaimed 'Cubist Reggae' with another four track EP. In the words of the man himself : “One of these tracks is about my 2 friends. I really love them, they are good people and really great friends. After I recorded the track, I had a vision that they became the same entity, like some kind of human spider hybrid, which I really didn't like as I don't think of them like that at all. The tune is not about that whatsoever but I kept thinking about that for a good 2 or 3 days. It was chilling. See if you can guess which song it is! Another, I wrote using only tweeters so it was hard to make out anything other than hi-hats. Still, it sounds much better than most music that has been recorded. See if you can guess which one it is! There is a track that mainly uses analog devices to control digital devices. It seems laughable that most people want to control their analog synths with midi, imposing their ridiculous choice of notes on the music. They are pretty much rapists. I have enabled these devices to communicate in a mutually respectful, consensual embrace. See if you can guess which track is 100% free of blatant narcissism! The final tune is a ramp, an inclined plane, or a crescendo of sorts in music, stretched out over a number of minutes. It's like a pyramid wall made from every thought you've ever thought of becoming immeasurably more discernible, yet built upon a river of everything you've tried to forget. The river is grey and all thoughts you've ever had are all other colors but mainly maroon and silver. See if you recognize your thoughts in this one!”