----
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
“It started as more of a description of the style of music I write than a name. One fine spring day years ago, I was 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. I always pay very special attention to the detail of my snares, and you could say that the snare is the lead instrument in most of my tracks, where maybe a vocalist would tell the story.
"Since the name came about, I've been told of a television news piece entitled ‘Venetian snares’. Apparently children were accidentally hanging themselves in Venetian blinds and dropping like flies.
I enjoy the word snare in the context of a trap or a lure...”
Venetian Snares is the nom de plume of Aaron Funk, an experimental breakcore and electronica producer who currently lives in Winnipeg, Canada.
For those who don’t know, “breakcore” is a subculture of electronic music that combines elements of industrial, jungle, hardcore techno and IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) into a mostly breakbeat-oriented sound that encourages speed, complexity, impact and maximum sonic density. Now more than ever breakcore, like punk, is better defined as an attitude than a musical style.
Funk is an incredibly prolific artist, having released over twenty albums since his debut in 1999. Before then, he played in a number of punk and death metal bands, and his love of extreme music styles has influenced his entire output since he began creating music on computers. He lists his personal interests as “sound, structure, shape and chaos” and has claimed in interviews that inanimate objects “fascinate him”.
The “crack rush”
The focal element of his style is the intricate drum programming, a reaction to the repetitive and stale rhythmic patterns of modern techno and drum & bass. Often he will deconstruct a single breakbeat, before reworking it into a million different interpretations. Funk compares this intense surge of over-complexity in the listener with the same feeling he experienced as a crack addict:
“For a period I would literally do crack all night and then after I came down I'd sleep a couple hours, get up and make music. I would twist the music until it gave me that same rush I got from the crack, that full euphoric adrenalin blast. Those were strange days! I remember the whole time making those early 12”s I was staring at a devil on an empty can of some kind of energy drink I don't think they sell here anymore”
YouTube vid for ‘A Lot of Drugs’: here
____________
Nymphomatriarch
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
In 2003, Venetian Snares gave new meaning to the term ‘artistic collaboration’ when he co-produced Nymphomatriarch with then-girlfriend Hecate. The album is constructed entirely of samples of the couple fucking. Microphones are applied internally and externally, ass-slaps are pitched in all manner of directions to create snares, and orgasmic grunts and squeals are morphed into cathedral-like choruses to create a dark ambience that is both arousing and greatly disturbing.
“It’s weird to deconstruct the sounds of sex. It makes you conscious of a lot of stuff you’d normally ignore”
Press release: # 1
------------------# 2
“We Be Friends Wi’ Childkillas”
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.![]()
In 2001 Venetian Snares released Doll Doll Doll, and in 2003 the companion remix album Find Candance.
Both albums are inextricably linked, and investigate the twin themes of child murderers and paedophiles – drawing material from such high-profile cases as the JonBenet Ramsey killing – and the fantastic notion of what it would be like to be a child’s doll (the track ‘Pygmalion’ on Doll Doll Doll is a reference to Doll Space Pygmalion, a Japanese company that manufactures erotic dolls). There are some terrifying sounds on these records.
YouTube vid for ‘Find Candace’: here
Press release: here
Trevor Brown
Underground artist Trevor Brown (mentioned on this blog many times in the past) has designed covers for four Venetian Snares releases. The cover for the Horse and Goat EP caused controversy: two manufacturers in the US refused to print it, and a removable black outer-cover had to be inserted before it could be sold in record shops.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.![]()
YouTube vid for ‘Sink Snow Angel’: here
Trevor Brown: here
PlanetMu
Many of Funks best albums have been released on the English label PlanetMu, including Rossz Csillag Alatt Született (Hungarian for “born under a bad star”), in my opinion the most beautiful record of 2005. Here, Funk throws some classical orchestration into the mix. Imagine Elgar and Debussey played by freejazz drummer Gene Krupa – on crystal meth – and you have an idea of what to expect. Oh, and it’s also concept album about pigeons.
wikipedia/RCAS
YouTube vid for ‘Öngyilkos vasárnap’ (Suicidal Sunday): here
planet-com
____________
Live
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.![]()
I saw Venetian Snares play live once, at my hometown in a riverside dive called the Waterfront. To this day its still the most insane, awesome and life-changing gig I’ve ever been to. During the non-stop three hour set, I can only describe what I heard as an out of body – or more accurately, out of mind – experience. Time for me seemed to slow down and yet continuously accelerate, like the ‘hyper drive’ sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I had no idea music could be used to such an effect.
YouTube vid for ‘Szamar Madar’: here
Breakbeats disintegrated into pure nothingness without ever once missing a beat, like the sound of an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of drum machines. Achingly beautiful synthesizer melodies melted into obscure samples from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A robobtic female voice intoned “someone in Leicester got stabbed with a syring full of, like, AIDS blood”.
If you tried dancing to this type of music at home, anyone watching would immediately call an ambulance for fear that you were suffering an aneurysm. In a club full of fucked up and crazed noise junkies this is not a problem. At one point I saw a kid jumping around like a pogo stick, nose smashed in and blood soaking his Aphex Twin t-shirt. Rather than an expression of pain, his eyes said “yes, oh FUCK -- YEAHHH!!”.
Some Goths who had earlier been nonchalantly passing a joint were now becoming visibly distressed. One girl began to freak out and spent the rest of the night crossed legged on the floor weeping.
At some point in the evening I went for a leak, only to find the door to the men’s room had been torn off its hinges. Apparently the staff never found it. A 14-year old kid offered me a great deal on mushrooms. I bought one on impulse but didn’t eat it. I didn’t need it, not with that wonderful, wonderful sound in my ears…
venetiansnares.com
isolaterecords.com/venetian
----
*
p.s. Hey. Beloved and M.I.A. d.l. Richard Eichmann used his guest-hosting slot ages ago to direct your attention to the very fine music maker Venetian Snares, and he remains worthy of your attention all these years later, so I hope you'll give him some. Thanks a lot again, Richard, wherever you are. Where I am today is back in Tokyo for the final stretch of Zac's and my Japan adventure. One of the things that we're scheduled to do today, and are almost for sure doing, is spending part of the day at this, if you're curious.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
“It started as more of a description of the style of music I write than a name. One fine spring day years ago, I was 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. I always pay very special attention to the detail of my snares, and you could say that the snare is the lead instrument in most of my tracks, where maybe a vocalist would tell the story.
"Since the name came about, I've been told of a television news piece entitled ‘Venetian snares’. Apparently children were accidentally hanging themselves in Venetian blinds and dropping like flies.
I enjoy the word snare in the context of a trap or a lure...”
Venetian Snares is the nom de plume of Aaron Funk, an experimental breakcore and electronica producer who currently lives in Winnipeg, Canada.
For those who don’t know, “breakcore” is a subculture of electronic music that combines elements of industrial, jungle, hardcore techno and IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) into a mostly breakbeat-oriented sound that encourages speed, complexity, impact and maximum sonic density. Now more than ever breakcore, like punk, is better defined as an attitude than a musical style.
Funk is an incredibly prolific artist, having released over twenty albums since his debut in 1999. Before then, he played in a number of punk and death metal bands, and his love of extreme music styles has influenced his entire output since he began creating music on computers. He lists his personal interests as “sound, structure, shape and chaos” and has claimed in interviews that inanimate objects “fascinate him”.
The “crack rush”
The focal element of his style is the intricate drum programming, a reaction to the repetitive and stale rhythmic patterns of modern techno and drum & bass. Often he will deconstruct a single breakbeat, before reworking it into a million different interpretations. Funk compares this intense surge of over-complexity in the listener with the same feeling he experienced as a crack addict:
“For a period I would literally do crack all night and then after I came down I'd sleep a couple hours, get up and make music. I would twist the music until it gave me that same rush I got from the crack, that full euphoric adrenalin blast. Those were strange days! I remember the whole time making those early 12”s I was staring at a devil on an empty can of some kind of energy drink I don't think they sell here anymore”
YouTube vid for ‘A Lot of Drugs’: here
____________
Nymphomatriarch
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
In 2003, Venetian Snares gave new meaning to the term ‘artistic collaboration’ when he co-produced Nymphomatriarch with then-girlfriend Hecate. The album is constructed entirely of samples of the couple fucking. Microphones are applied internally and externally, ass-slaps are pitched in all manner of directions to create snares, and orgasmic grunts and squeals are morphed into cathedral-like choruses to create a dark ambience that is both arousing and greatly disturbing.
“It’s weird to deconstruct the sounds of sex. It makes you conscious of a lot of stuff you’d normally ignore”
Press release: # 1
------------------# 2
“We Be Friends Wi’ Childkillas”
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
In 2001 Venetian Snares released Doll Doll Doll, and in 2003 the companion remix album Find Candance.
Both albums are inextricably linked, and investigate the twin themes of child murderers and paedophiles – drawing material from such high-profile cases as the JonBenet Ramsey killing – and the fantastic notion of what it would be like to be a child’s doll (the track ‘Pygmalion’ on Doll Doll Doll is a reference to Doll Space Pygmalion, a Japanese company that manufactures erotic dolls). There are some terrifying sounds on these records.
YouTube vid for ‘Find Candace’: here
Press release: here
Trevor Brown
Underground artist Trevor Brown (mentioned on this blog many times in the past) has designed covers for four Venetian Snares releases. The cover for the Horse and Goat EP caused controversy: two manufacturers in the US refused to print it, and a removable black outer-cover had to be inserted before it could be sold in record shops.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
YouTube vid for ‘Sink Snow Angel’: here
Trevor Brown: here
PlanetMu
Many of Funks best albums have been released on the English label PlanetMu, including Rossz Csillag Alatt Született (Hungarian for “born under a bad star”), in my opinion the most beautiful record of 2005. Here, Funk throws some classical orchestration into the mix. Imagine Elgar and Debussey played by freejazz drummer Gene Krupa – on crystal meth – and you have an idea of what to expect. Oh, and it’s also concept album about pigeons.
wikipedia/RCAS
YouTube vid for ‘Öngyilkos vasárnap’ (Suicidal Sunday): here
planet-com
____________
Live
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I saw Venetian Snares play live once, at my hometown in a riverside dive called the Waterfront. To this day its still the most insane, awesome and life-changing gig I’ve ever been to. During the non-stop three hour set, I can only describe what I heard as an out of body – or more accurately, out of mind – experience. Time for me seemed to slow down and yet continuously accelerate, like the ‘hyper drive’ sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I had no idea music could be used to such an effect.
YouTube vid for ‘Szamar Madar’: here
Breakbeats disintegrated into pure nothingness without ever once missing a beat, like the sound of an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of drum machines. Achingly beautiful synthesizer melodies melted into obscure samples from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A robobtic female voice intoned “someone in Leicester got stabbed with a syring full of, like, AIDS blood”.
If you tried dancing to this type of music at home, anyone watching would immediately call an ambulance for fear that you were suffering an aneurysm. In a club full of fucked up and crazed noise junkies this is not a problem. At one point I saw a kid jumping around like a pogo stick, nose smashed in and blood soaking his Aphex Twin t-shirt. Rather than an expression of pain, his eyes said “yes, oh FUCK -- YEAHHH!!”.
Some Goths who had earlier been nonchalantly passing a joint were now becoming visibly distressed. One girl began to freak out and spent the rest of the night crossed legged on the floor weeping.
At some point in the evening I went for a leak, only to find the door to the men’s room had been torn off its hinges. Apparently the staff never found it. A 14-year old kid offered me a great deal on mushrooms. I bought one on impulse but didn’t eat it. I didn’t need it, not with that wonderful, wonderful sound in my ears…
venetiansnares.com
isolaterecords.com/venetian
----
*
p.s. Hey. Beloved and M.I.A. d.l. Richard Eichmann used his guest-hosting slot ages ago to direct your attention to the very fine music maker Venetian Snares, and he remains worthy of your attention all these years later, so I hope you'll give him some. Thanks a lot again, Richard, wherever you are. Where I am today is back in Tokyo for the final stretch of Zac's and my Japan adventure. One of the things that we're scheduled to do today, and are almost for sure doing, is spending part of the day at this, if you're curious.