April 22, 2010

Venetian Snares - Detrimentalist (2008)

We can always count on Aaron Funk to punish us at least once a year. If you're not familiar with Venetian Snares, it's time for you to open up that hole and crawl out. Seriously. Winnipeg (Canada) based Funk is a prolific champion of the edgiest of genres - from modern-classical orchestral arrangements violated with breakcore to noisy electronic sprinkled with clicks and cuts. Detrimentalist is Funk's twentieth album, in which he steps away from classical themes sampled and revisited in My Downfall, and brings back the early drum'n'bass loops only the way Venetian Snares can. Planet Mu describes the release as "Venetian Snares' 332nd official studio album of disgusting ejacutronic rave horn." After a couple of rotations the intelligent design behind complex time signatures stands out from the imitators' attempts at making (whatever)-core simply for the sake of it.

The first two tracks, "Gentleman" and "Koonut-Kaliffee" set the tone for the entire album, and the grind never stops. The cover art is sprinkled with an array of neon green aliens, robots, skulls, wingdings, guns, cassettes, and other demented and detrimental paraphernalia. And ducks. My favorite track is "Eurocore MVP" with ragga vocal samples, Funk's staple bass rips, drilling Amen breaks and an obligatory snare rush. This is breakcore at its finest.

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