Venetian Snares - My So-Called Life (2010)

Last year's Venetian Snares album Filth was like a car wreck for me - decidedly unpleasant but impossible to turn away from. The marriage of breakcore and hardcore acid house on a porno-themed album was so gonzo that I wondered what boundaries Aaron Funk would transgress next. Well it turns out, after over a decade of tongue-in-cheek breakcore provocation and sound terrorism, Aaron Funk has apparently decided that he's just going to have fun. Not that he wasn't having fun before, but this time around it's hard to even begin to be offended by all the crazy shit he throws around - he is clearly taking the piss. He does not care.

My So-Called Life (or, as iTunes dubs it, Playing Jungle at a French Speedcore Party, in what's almost certainly another little joke on Funk's part) is something of a return to form for Venetian Snares, stepping back from the brink of brutalized acid back towards the go-for-broke breakcore he made his name on. In terms of feel, this is more akin to his last album in this style (not counting 2008's jungle throwback Detrimentalist, which was strangely light on the manic humor), 2006's Cavalcade of Glee and  Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms. The menace of the Venetian Snares persona is definitely felt about the edges of the music. Opener (and long-time live crowd pleaser) "Posers and Camera Phones" shows off Funk's impressive classical chops with a winding goth-rave piano line before the gleefully over-the-top hip hop samples start assaulting your ears, stating that he "fucking hates you" and, in perhaps the most provocative moments on the album, promises to rape you. It would be more upsetting if it weren't a sample removed from its original context, where it was probably quite threatening, into a overblown, maniacal breakcore song.

"Cadaverous" keeps the breakcore train speeding along with a sample that I know I've heard before (is it from the Wire? I forget) and Funk's trademark slapdash, queasy synthwork. "Aaron2" is a mock breakcore melodrama in the creepy / weird Rossz tradition, telling a story of a boy named "Aaron" and how he turns evil after his sheep are stolen from him and learns to play the drums. "Who Wants Cake?" is yet another tongue-in-cheek provocation, with samples of the word "retarded" being replicated over infectious retro club synths. The pitch-shifted woman singing about how she feels retarded and "Wilford Brimley" warning of the dangers of encountering the disabled at night are especially nice touches.

Then comes the centerpiece of the album, "Welfare Wednesday", in which a rapper lists off all the things he would like to see / do inside the female anatomy. Here is just a few of the things in / being done in it:
 - Orange juice
 - Leather jackets
 - Selling crystal meth
 - Planet Mu label head Mike Paradinas
 - Egg salad sandwiches
It would be incredibly transgressive if it wasn't so aggressively goofy. As with "Who Wants Cake?" there's also a pitch-shifted female vocalist, though I can't hear exactly what she's singing. It ranks with some of the best songs Venetian Snares has ever produced. It's followed by "Ultraviolent Junglist", which is unfortunately a fairly routine breakneck Jungle (duh) song with nothing to really recommend it beyond its insane speed.

Funk slows it down with ""Goodbye9/Hello10", which comes from the same school of breakcore / classical fusion of Detrimentalist's "Miss Balaton" and the acclaimed Rossz csillag alatt született. It's become a bit cliche to say that Funk's best work is in this style, but this really is a very good song. Vsnares' music can be really evocative when he lets it - the strings especially are suitably cinematic and impart some drama onto the proceedings. "Sound Burglar" starts out with doom-laden horns before devolving into a ragga breakcore freakout (though as breakcore freakouts go, this one is remarkably relaxed), beating less adventurous contemporaries like Shitmat at their own game.

The penultimate track, "Hajnal2" is, as the name suggests, an edit / V.I.P. of Rossz csillag alatt született's jazz / classical / breakcore opus "Hajnal", one of that album's standouts. The edit removes the original's jazz leanings and inserts a greater emphasis on Funk's intricate drum programming and adds a few acid-y touches and a bewitching male vocal snippet (singing about how no birds sing in his heart), plus a few touchstones from other Rossz tracks. For anyone who loved that album, it will be a welcome surprise.

The album closes out with the "title" track, "My So-Called Life", which begins like a less somber outtake from Rossz, or even some lost vintage Joanna Newsom track, before unexpectedly subtle electronic touches start inching their way in around the strings. I keep expecting the song to explode into breakcore, but Funk plays with our expectations, biding his time until about three minutes in and even then showing a good deal of restraint. It plays like "Miss Balaton" in miniature, and it's these sort of songs that reveal just what a talented composer Aaron Funk is.

With most any other artist a "return to form" would be met with skepticism - usually when an artist consciously goes back to styles he or she employed in years past it's taken as a sign of creative bankruptcy (think U2 or even Beck), but Venetian Snares is far more creative than most. What's more, one gets the sense that Funk has nothing to prove - he's made a career out of doing his best to alienate listeners while at the same time enticing them with his displays of prodigious talent. By going back to the well and revisiting his disparate muses of the last decade he may well have made his most dynamic and appealing album. Not every song clicks but the ones that do click do so like none other. Aaron Funk deserves the "evil genius" title just as much as Aphex Twin did, maybe more. I just hope he doesn't "retire" as soon as Aphex did.



Tracklisting:
01. Posers and Camera Phones
02. Cadaverous
03. Aaron2
04. Who Wants Cake?
05. Welfare Wednesday
06. Ultraviolent
07. Goodbye9/Hello10
08. Sound Burglar
09. Hajnal2
10. My So-Called Life

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