Planet Mu
Venetian Snares : Winter in the belly of a snake (CAN,2003)****°
I think it is not bad for me to review Venetian Snares releases because I am sure most reviewers have a totally different angle to music before choosing to review these releases. Venetian Snares for me deliver 100% artistic music, not just music with beats and beeps and effects.
I have noticed that each album uses different techniques and sonic pallets despite the general vision. This album might be one of the quietest onces I heard from the band before. The most surprising tracks are put as first tracks. Often moods are build up with use of keyboards mixed with electro-core arrangements. I will try to describe what I heard.
“Dad” is based upon electro-acoustic and electronic beats with a complex sonic quality, using a part with strange dual picked-alike chords, ping pong rhythms and a few complex parts of arrangements with different accents and rhythmic speeds of additional arrangements to it, while this is also sung with two vocals, with a dramatic story. A bit further contemporary piano arrangements are added brilliantly. The balanced complexity and range of rhythms and sonic depth within this song I rarely heard before with any other artist. It is one of those visionary qualities which distinguishes Venetian snares from any other band.
“Stairs song” again has different chamber-like layers of keyboards with different sounds of every layer and a few faster break beats added within the slower lead melody. The second faster layer tries to become dominant with more rhythms, but it is the quiet theme which wins the game.
“Tattoo” is another masterpiece of slowly pulsating melody with quiet, very fast in-between ticking and bass beats. A sampled cello starts to participate making the filmic track more complex, still with a pulsating rhythm. A broken into pieces voices is added and more sonic accents, building up dynamics like what is used in a game, adding bass sequences here and there too.
“Gottrahmen” uses different sampled sounds of a whale in different tunes like a voice mixed with filmic keyboards. Another quiet part sounds like voices.
“Suffocate” uses again electro-acoustic sounds rhythmically, from a loop of metallic low sounds of ticking to fast data ticks arrangements with extra and then more loop-like sound effects on different sound levels from bass to pitches with small change and some returning soprano voice with a bit variety. A relaxing track.
“January” is a next moody piece with ambient electronica mixed with drum and bass and keyboards and some spoken word. Also “Crawlspace” combines slow keyboard themes with ultrafast break-beats arrangements in a very filmic way. This evolves from very slumbering slow passages to ultra-fast breakbeat arrangements, like a filmic core with intelligent fragmentary broken up melodies and rhythms. The short “she” sounds very different, like a song from the later Nick Cave with simple cello sampled keyboard arrangements. “Cashew” is based upon just one computer melody in it mixed with slow keyboard moods and breakbreats and some spoken word fragment, a very moody piece which ends with keyboard driven neo-classical arrangements. Also “Warm Body” is based upon a breathing moody keyboard tune, enriched with some electro-breakbeats while “Sink Snow Angel” is a melancholic neo-classical piece with cello imitations and extra breakcore arrangements. The short track “Yes love, my soul is black” uses an arrangement of noise with some pitches. “Icosikaipent” arranged electro-acoustic noisy rhythms with electronic and keyboard arrangements, very moody, quiet, echoing, rhythmically pulsating, returning, slumbering. This is filtered until only some vivid electronic sound rhythm is left over. Also “Earth” is a track with just a living sound rhythm as an outro for the album. Like every album I heard from the band/project, rewarding, a keeper for now and the future.
