Search - Venetian Snares :: Songs About My Cats

One of the best electronic music albums ever made.

HeXXiiiZ | 03/22/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The sense of thematic simplicity developed by the means of such an abstract, confronting, and complex style is a herculean feat of aesthetic sense and technical measure. The meter and character of this album flow liquid but viscous through brief but poignant grooves of rhythm permuting through possibilities while evolving relentlessly. The architectonic sense of ground and setting behind each track are distinct and revealed sometimes quickly yet often gradually, not shedding light on the entire space until its darkly corners elicit a building anticipation and release into colorful motifs of lively ambiance -- as opposed to meandering melodiousness or a self-conditioning series of three-note hooks so frequently resorted to when a vision is not defined enough to fill such an ambitious space.



No little amount could be said about each track and fully convey the manifold points that constitute each picture. To state just one of these multitudinous subjects of great intrigue: even the tracks that function as the interstitial glue to bring cohesion into the forays through denser grounds themselves stand out with brilliance. 'For Bertha Rand' as an example is more straightforward in style and simple in form than many of neighboring tracks like, 'Poor Kakarookee' with its climactic expansiveness, yet itself expresses an artistically complete aesthetic the contours of which reveal hidden depth. A haunting vocal sound followed by reed noises and a very burgundy sounding sax riff create one of the most compelling feats of sample juxtaposition.



I have a hard time picking a favorite track off of this album because each track has the musically rare but astounding quality of being in itself entirely appropriate in its proper time. The direction of the album as a whole moves from cool and glitchy to warm and expressive marked by increasing amounts of jazz samples. Creating this kind of a feel is difficult and requires an acute sense of each color a complex sample adds to the picture. Venetian Snares does this here exquisitely. In Kakenrooken Stivlobits, for example, samples and timbres that most would never get away with find lucidity in context and become justified in their most characteristic notes.



The structure of the album thrusts the listener into a deep blue/green place that begins to warm up and engage with familiarity as though migrating through seasons from spring to fall, reaching a zenith point in the aggressive 'Fluff Master', an emotional track with complicated melodic message. This album is a unique and uncompromising artistic work standing out from its genre relying on little familiar recapitulation of cliches and parameters, rhythmically or sonically, that buttress even some of Venetian Snares other works. Despite the excellence in craft Venetian Snares brings to more conventional beats and styles conventional to IDM and Breakcore, few of these standards are used here. The style and technique, as in all great works of art, are transparent to the ideas they are used to convey.



This album is certainly a work of art to be listened to carefully and many times with little loss of novelty and brilliance. Its expressive abstraction is reminiscent of Surrealist painting and Jazz in many ways analog to visual sentiments of Gorky or Matta. Definitely get this album if you are willing to stare deeply into it and enjoy its complexities actively. I personally think it is one of the best electronic music albums ever made, and perhaps it will become more recognized as it is reflected on in time, which will certainly do it justice."