Come on down to Funk Junction, we've got it all!
Songs about cats, songs about
orange things, songs about
dolls, and songs about
Canada! We have
IDM,
jungle,
breakcore, and
harsh noise! Do you like
jazz and
modern classical music? Great! We've got that, too,
chopped up and
re-arranged for easy digestion!
A whole world of sound, created by Aaron Funk! A veritable city of
Venetian Snares! And we have a biography, too, after the break (or you can skip the background, and go directly to
the streaming music). Please note that kids should probably stay outside the Funk Junction, as it'll get
loud, angry and obscene at times.
Perhaps it all started
when he was in the womb and his mother played
Tubular Bells, or perhaps when the young Aaron Funk was plunking on a piano at a young age. Or maybe it was the punk bands he was in as a kid that started Mr. Funk on a path towards music production. Somehow, that varied history lead to the early 1990s with Aaron Funk
making experimental compositions with multiple ghetto blasters, by simultaneously playing various recorded sounds from different tape players. Aaron Funk would move on to computer-based production, but keeping the same aesthetic of sound mashing. In the process, Aaron found himself a name. One day while "
writing a track with really fast snare rolls that sounded like scraping a stick across a grate or running a pencil down venetian blinds in a distracted classroom," he came up with the name Venetian Snares.
That name was first associated with
some cassettes in
the late 1990s. In 1999, the Canadian producer/DJ started his prolific release of music by commercial means, with a split CDr/Cassette (
Fuck Canada/Fuck America) on
CLFST (YT samples:
Blister,
Let the Dog Out,
New Panties) and a 12" record on
History of the Future (Greg Hates Car Culture) (YT samples: Personal Discourse,
Boiled Angel,
Point Blank; note:these tracks are played in
Audio Surf [
prev], so there are some extra chipper video game SFX in the otherwise brutal tracks).
The first Venetian Snares album on CD (
printf("shiver in eternal darkness/n");) was released the next year, on
Isolate Records. It was actually slower than prior work, but with the same spastic
7/4 time signature. (YT samples:
C8 Diversity,
Fire is the Devil,
Molting). In that same year, Funk released his first overseas record (
Salt EP) on
Hecate's
Zhark International label. To balance out these slower pieces, there is also the abusive EP (
7 Sevens.med EP ) that is surprisingly rhythmic (YT:
From the Snare,
More Drug Less Love,
More Drug And Bass,
Number Seven).
2001 was when Venetian Snares really took off, with three albums, four EPs, and one single, across five labels. This was also first year that Venetian Snares signed to a larger label:
Mike Paradinas' Planet Mu. The albums:
Doll Doll Doll: a horror movie soundtrack,
based around a theme of child murder (released on
Hymen Records,
streaming on MySpace);
Songs About My Cats: really and truly songs about Aarons cats -- the songs "
might not be very cohesive... but they are simply amazing in their intricate richness" (Planet Mu,
streaming album); and the first album on Planet Mu was
Making Orange Things, a collaboration with
Speedranch, made over ICQ.
In an interview (
cache), Aaron said "[Speedranch] would scream into his computer then send the recordings to me and I would make tunes out of it." (YT samples:
Pay Me for Sex,
Molly's Reach Around,
Viva Las Vegas). The other collaboration of 2001 was
a split with Cex, part of the the Connected series on
Klangkrieg (YT samples:
Eleven Million Panda Bears In Bondage,
How To Steal And Store An Ice Sculpted Bear ,
Ice Pirate Not Steeler).
In 2002, there were two new Venetian Snares albums, plus a compilation of left-over tracks, and two singles:
Higgins Ultra Low Track Glue Funk Hits 1972 -- 2006, in which Funk "
seems to be trying to mix every possible musical style with his own trademark drill'n'bass" (Planet Mu,
streaming);
Winter in the Belly of a Snake, "
quite a cerebral release, [for fans] of schizo beat programming and off-kilter songcraft" (Planet Mu,
streaming); and
2370894 (a compilation released as Vsnares), "
a more playful, loose vibe ... amazingly cohesive, and far from your standard tossed-off amalgam of half-baked leftovers" (Planet Mu,
streaming).
2003: another year, another two albums, and a new collaboration album, two more EPs and
two more split records:
Find Candace, a sequel to the 2001 album
Doll, Doll, Doll, with "
Venetian Snares further exploring the regions of his dark ambient side" (Hymen Records,
streaming);
The Chocolate Wheelchair Album has
Venetian Snares reclaiming ownership of the dance floor (Planet Mu,
streaming) [and the associated Planet Mu EP,
Einstein-Rosen Bridge,
streaming]; Aaron Funk and Rachael Kozak teamed up for
Nymphomatriarch, receiving much attention about the source of their samples (simply put, "
Venetian Snares and Hecate had sex, recorded it, and made an album .... though the compositional structures themselves seem to have gotten short shrift, the source material makes for some of the most surreal listening of recent memory") (Hymen Records,
streaming).
2004 was slow, by Venetian Snares standards, with only one album, two EPs, and a single and a split single. The album was
Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding, "
[a] difficult listen from start to finish, [which] will reward those dusty interstices of the brain no pop tune will ever reach." (Planet Mu,
streaming). The two singles were released on
Doormouse's Addict Records), and are two very different releases. One was aggressive/abusive
Skelechairs with
Doormouse, the other was
Moonglow/This Bitter Earth, two Venetian Snares takes on jazz tracks, with the b-side hinting at the sounds to come from Mr. Funk (
streaming).
The juxtaposition of those two Addict Records releases were reflected in the sounds of 2005. Of the three albums released that year, two were in realms of sonic brutality, and the third was a blending of classical samples, modern classic styles, and Funk's high-speed breakbeats.
Rossz Csillag Alatt Született was inspired by Funk's time in Hungary, with the album and track titles in Hungarian and samples from Eastern European composers (Planet Mu,
streaming). On the other side are the albums
Winnipeg Is a Frozen Shithole, in which Aaron shares his feelings for his home town, set to a gabber beat (Sublight Records,
YT playlist 1,
playlist 2); and
Meathole, which is continually haunted by a "
specter of unpleasant, transgressive malevolence" (Planet Mu,
streaming). And for another tangent, 2005 was the year of the first acid-laced IDM side-project
Last Step, with the
You're a Nice Girl record (YT:
You're a Nice Girl,
Soda,
Breakers Know,
You're A Nice Girl Remix). The project was not associated with Funk at first, but the secret is out.
The next year saw another album,
Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms (
streaming) and a follow-up mini-album,
Hospitality (
streaming), both on Planet Mu. This work was an evolution beyond
Rossz Csillag Alatt Született, bringing back in more of the chaos from past works, but based around more subtle structures. Another continuation of
Rossz Csillag ... in 2006 was the EP
4 Adaptations Of Rossz Csillag Alatt Született, remixes by the Dutch breakcore producer,
Bong-Ra, also released on Planet Mu (
streaming).
In 2007, Aaron Funk released two albums, one as Venetian Snares, the other under his Last Step moniker. As Snares, he released
My Downfall (Original Soundtrack), a soundtrack to his own demise of sorts. Intended as a follow-up to
Rossz Csillag ..., but not a continuation - more intense and driven than the prior work. "
I know this'll sound corny, but all you classical geeks who complain that there are no good modern composers - they're right here, they really are." (Planet Mu,
streaming) As Last Step, Funk produced
a self-titled album,
created using original analogue equipment like the Roland 303, 606, 707 and Jupiter etc. The album included his first Last Step EP, plus new cuts (YT samples:
Lives with Angels,
Dramatix,
Your Carrot Soup). Another semi-mysterious project was the loosely veiled
Sabbath Dubs by Snares (
Black Sabbath /
Electric Funeral), Sampling Black Sabbath and an interview with Ozzy Osbourne.
Aaron changed directions again, with the 2008 Venetian Snares album
Detrimentalist, using "
nightmarish rave melodies" that call back to early 1990s jungle and hardcore, plus late 1990s video games and hip-hop samples (Planet Mu,
streaming; bonus:
Miss Balaton single from the album,
streaming). The second Last Step was also released in 2008.
2008 -
1969 (Planet Mu) as Last Step, an album comprised of "
a collection of joy-filled jumpy
acid manoeuvres, funky grooves and kitsch beats" (Planet Mu,
6 streaming tracks).
2009 -
Filth melds the recent complexity with the early Snares ultra-violence. You have been warned. "
[In] keeping with the title, these excursions into the darkest depths of acid bring more distortion and spine-breaking beats to the genre than witnessed in a dozen Luke Vibert or Ceephax records." (Planet Mu,
streaming). The follow-up EP,
Horsey Noises, is a lot softer (relatively speaking); More acidic and bleepy than harsh and distorted (Planet Mu,
2010 was down-right sleepy, compared to the Snares peak. The one album released was My So-Called Life, a very personal album that was released on Aaron's new label, Timesig (
streaming). Aaron Funk also teamed up with former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist and general musician (writer, performer, producer)
John Frusciante as
Speed Dealer Moms, and they released
a self-titled EP (
March_Three-3 /
March_Four), also on his Timesig label.
And now we have 2011, in which there has been one EP released to date:
Cubist Reggae, "
basic loops and ideas taken from reggae but bent into strange angular sounds" (Planet Mu,
streaming).
Bonus tidbits:
Venetian Snares on TVTropes, and
the official Venetian Snares website (which is pretty dull at the moment).
posted by bicyclefish at 3:24 PM on June 27, 2011