My Downfall - Venetian Snares

...in reviewing)

MY DOWNFALL

Every single music critic has branded My Downfall as a companion piece to Venetian Snares' 2005 release Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett. Technically, this is correct but it doesn't really do much to aptly describe the album either.

Ever since his 2001 album Songs About My Cats, Aaron has been using the kind of operatic and avant-garde tones found in this particular release. The ...
...in My Downfall this resonates more than anything else.
I do not mean to sound snobbish, but I think that many of the fans do not recognize these elements and subtleties, so much that when My Downfall came out, it was immediatly percieved as "soft" or "too classical". You really have to know a bit about avant-garde music to truly appreciate what Aaron has put together here.

My Downfall is made of 14 tracks ... more

(no lifting, similarities are coincidential - past experience in reviewing)

MY DOWNFALL

Every single music critic has branded My Downfall as a companion piece to Venetian Snares' 2005 release Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett. Technically, this is correct but it doesn't really do much to aptly describe the album either.

Ever since his 2001 album Songs About My Cats, Aaron has been using the kind of operatic and avant-garde tones found in this particular release. The artist obviously has a deep-rooted interest in modernist music, and in My Downfall this resonates more than anything else.
I do not mean to sound snobbish, but I think that many of the fans do not recognize these elements and subtleties, so much that when My Downfall came out, it was immediatly percieved as "soft" or "too classical". You really have to know a bit about avant-garde music to truly appreciate what Aaron has put together here.

My Downfall is made of 14 tracks and has a running time of 45 minutes approx.

Our opener Colorless is a stunner. It sways gently while operatic voices open and close in the background. It sounds as if the track was breathing; the sound washes in and out likes waves on a shore.

The 2nd, 5th, 8th and 10th tracks contain the only breakcore elements on the entire release; making for a much more contemplative album with the remaining 10 tracks being either ambient or instrumental. Out of these, the tamest has to be The Hopeless Pursuit of Remission. This track actually does sound like it was directly lifted from Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett.

Intergraation is obviously the big bad daddy on this release. What starts with a weeping violin soon turns into a hyper-technical glitch-core suite, and then into a deep acid breakcore groove. Huge basslines and an unbelievably saturated acid drone makes this a veritable pleasure to listen to.
My Half and My Crutch follow the same logic, but with completely different emotions and tone. It wouldn't be Venetian Snares without the usual amount of variety anyway!
Amon-Tobin jazz cues turn into beat propellors, violins chant, snares twirl into hurricanes of massive intensity, fragments of the music bite at each other and at themselves...yes, it is good...and almost impossible to describe with mainstream language!

It might be worthwhile to point out that the rhythmical arrangements are slighly more accessible than that of the usual 7/4 and other maniac time signatures from the artist's past discography. This does not mean that they are as accessible as your average electronica of course. It just seems that more emphasis is placed on incricate detail rather than time signature.

Tracks such as I'm Sorry I Failed You and If I Could Say I Love You are deeply beautiful. Here, you could almost imagine these being performed with natural instruments (it certainly sounds that way!). These are subtle and rich in sound. The artist is being very evocative here...there might be a story behind these poignant melodies.

Another aspect of past albums was jazz. Venetian Snares' sound contains many jazz elements, even when the corresponding sampled instruments are absent. This aspect is fully celebrated in one of the more percussive moments on the album, in which snares and drum rolls have a kind of dusty and real-souding feel to them, most notabely in track nbr. 8 (My Half).

Other tracks such as Hollo Utca 2 and Mentioning It are more traditionally avant-garde. They capture a radical intellect at work, and have some kind of genuine John Cage-like quality to them. I happen to be an admirer of many avant-garde composers, so don't think I'm using these words lighly. Other tracks even portray Snares under a minimal light. Hollo Utca 3 sounds very much like a Philip Glass composition.
Aaron Funk is an undeniably talented musician!

If you are familiar with Venetian Snares' discography, you will recognise many trademarks of his previous work here. Yet, as with every other release that the artist has put forth, My Downfall has its own unique feel. It generally feels as upbeat as Calvalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom-Poms (Planet Mu, 2006), but with a certain sense of melancholy and seriousness that reminds me of Winter in The Belly of A Snake (Planet Mu, 2002).

This album comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

(no lifting, similarities are coincidential - past experience in reviewing) 

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