Your Face is ineloquent, unstructured, crazy, obtuse, perverted. It’s a powerful spectacle of sound that’s debilitating and irritating all at once. Same old Venetian Snares then. Yep.
Read the title of the first track on this EP (“Your Face When I Finally”) and ask “what does it mean?” Expectation? A listener in shock after their first ever exposure to a Venetian Snares tune? Your face when I finally… what exactly? Some crude sexual innuendo? DJ, Aaron Funk, anarchistically puts his music together—he describes this in a recent interview with Resident Advisor, “I’m the kind of person that always writes from a contextual point of view. It has to be something that is relevant to me.” I’m not convinced he knows how to describe meaning behind his work or even the process. In other words, his tracks are as bottomless as we see them, full or empty as you attach or dis-attach meaning.
This is important when coming to critically judge Venetian Snares work—I as a critic search and usually arrive at an honesty in most musicians’ work, but in Aaron Funk’s, it’s difficult to find anything which best says how it is. In this way, he’s the purist of art—you can only feel what he does to fully grasp it. Your Face is ineloquent, unstructured, crazy, obtuse, perverted. It’s a powerful spectacle of sound that’s debilitating and irritating all at once. Same old Venetian Snares then. Yep.
Judging the quality of this financially broke and ‘household’ IDM name is a moot point in Funk’s own words, but it makes for a fascinating narrative at this juncture in his musical career. He’s now on a bit of a comeback. This was his last EP before pleading for help from fans for money.
And how’s Venetian Snares doing? Judging by this, he’s OK. Your Face is a typical piece of music by the Canadian born DJ. The EP is peeled back and comparably minimalist from where Funk’s been before. It’s closer to Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding than the hardcore Hospitality, or the dynamic Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett. Your Face is a diluted Venetian Snares experience, with a focus on craftsmanship and structure, rather than the pulsating change of samples at 200bpm. Yet the EP is less interesting for it—too spacious and comfortable for Funk to really groove in.
Nothing in life beats diminishing returns and Venetian Snare’s latest is suffering from that old hack. He’s still the madcap veteran DJ, ripping through samples while crafting a loosely structured electronic tune—but while his sound flies by the speed of light, Funk’s own productivity, of churning out record after record, has made it seem motionless. Swallowed by complexity, samples, amen breaks… the same old.
Your Face is available on Planet Mu.
