Aaron Funk: a prolific artist with a gaggle of pseudonyms
in tow including Venetian Snares, Ventriloquist Snakes
and Snares Man!. Declaration of ignorance: Venetian
Snares is a significant gap in this reviewer’s
knowledge of electronica: if seeking a verdict on the
comparative merits of this release relative to the rest
of Venetian Snares’ oeuvre, please look elsewhere.
Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding is all fizzing,
hyperspeed percussion moving over and under one-finger
toystore melodies, stop/start rhythms, sudden switchbacks
and shifting layers of musical/percussive activity.
Every sound appears to contain a toxic quota of synthetic
additives, frequently to the exclusion of anything else.
Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding inhabits
an entirely synthetic world, one that’s made of
numbered polymers rather than atoms. Despite the titles,
this music isn’t allusive: it is self-contained,
seemingly self-perpetuating like a series of virtual
mechanisms, elegant sci-fi constructions, the musical
envisioning of shifting nano-technological gears. There’s
something mad-scientist/hare-brained baroque about it.
Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding is a hypertrophied
soundgarden overgrown with dayglo plastic plants twitching
towards miscellaneous light sources in photosynthetic
spasm, their roots a writhing and constantly reconfiguring
chaos. Its title is reminiscent of Duchamp’s Nude
Descending A Staircase. The graphics recall Me
Company’s work for Bjork’s
Homogenic.
Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding sounds like
a highly skilled exploration of conceptual and musical
themes first mapped out by Autechre
in their releases between Amber and Chiastic
Slide, and more particularly the Peel
EPs. Even the titles (Li2CO3, Bonivital,
Chlorophyll) are written to the Autechre
template so widely adopted throughout electronicaland.
Venetian Snares’ latest is certainly enjoyable,
but ultimately not exactly earth-shatteringly revelatory,
at least to this listener. Once this is accepted (if
it is), what becomes interesting is to question the
function of exploring previously delineated spaces –
the usefulness of genre pieces, so to speak. The pleasure
is clearly not to do with innovation, the thrill/shock
of the new, but rather the navigation and creation of
shapes within predefined spaces. Once such parameters
are understood, it should become possible to appreciate
other facets of a piece of work. Whether this is worthwhile
ultimately depends upon the listener’s preferences.
It might be interesting to conduct a blindfold taste
test. Which do you prefer: Coke or Pepsi?
Colin Buttimer
2.5/5 |
