Aaron Funk’s been releasing music as Venetian Snares since 1997. He is renowned and well regarded as a hero of electronic and drum and bass music with a discography that is incredibly ambitious and extremely varied. I like Venetian Snares. He’s a true sonic explorer and I think he has authenticity as an artist, always challenging himself with new technical approaches and always challenging his audience with exciting, weird sounds. He’s been incredibly prolific with 27 full length records released – all of them with strange titles like “printf(‘shiver in eternal darkness/n’);”, “Songs About My Cats” and “Winnipeg is a Frozen Shithole”. So there’s an element of playfulness and sarcasm going on here alongside a capacity for a very dark and twisted understanding of the world. If he’s trying to make us think he doesn’t give a shit, I don’t buy it – because no one makes 27 albums without giving a lot of a shit. “Traditional Synthesizer Music” can then be understood as another sort of sarcastic, anti-joke of a title.
About a year before the release of this album there was talk on twitter of serious financial issues in Aaron’s life – serious enough that he was looking to sell off huge pieces of equipment to get out of the hole. He was also re-releasing his entire discography – he created a bandcamp and asked fans to please support some of the older records. It was relatively successful and that episode was followed quickly with a self-released album titled “Thank You For Your Consideration”. This record followed a couple of months after that.
“Traditional Synthesizer Music” might be interpreted as a sort of pandering, an attempt to try to produce, or appear to produce something safe and accessible. This album reads from the cover as a straight ahead work – it mirrors the old jazz LP layouts. Maybe this is a comment about our musical values – how we reflect on older works and what makes us comfortable. Another, more literal reading of the title could be understood by reading some of the liner notes on the album. Funk chose, for this record, to produce all of the songs on modular synthesizer equipment and record it all live in one take. So in a sense the album was made by mostly “traditional” means – even if the tradition of using synthesizers in any way is not more than 100 years old.
So given all of this, if you were expecting some gentle rhythms and minimal synth work, you’d be misled. No, this is the familiar Venetian Snares territory – an ear and mind pummeling experience. Starting with the second track, the tempo lurches forward and the drums start hitting really….really quick. There is some sort of unconscious rhythmic effect, like a drill in your skull, that starts taking over. No real point of contact with the floor from here on out, you’re sort of just tossed around. It can make you feel very small. Though it might not be as violent sonically as some of the older stuff, this album is extremely energetic and technically a complex and involved piece of composition (Apparently the synth patches were built, recorded and then torn up to move on to the next one).
For all of its rhythmic aggression, the specific synthesizer sounds and textures here are pretty soft. They’re filtered smoothly, kept nice and warm and there’s not too much distortion or wetness to make things really thick. There is a certain cleanliness and sterility. Unlike some of his earlier stuff which was quirky and sort of nonsensical, even inappropriate, this album feels serious, intentional and monolithic. If “Traditional Synthesizer Music” is anything, it’s the latest reminder that Aaron really doesn’t give a shit, and he’s very happy to hole up in Winnipeg and slip us some of his madness for a while longer.
The 2nd track:
