Search - Venetian Snares :: Hospitality

Bring in the noise, bring in the FUNK

somethingexcellent | Lincoln, NE United States | 11/30/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A couple months have passed, which means that it must be time for another Venetian Snares release. Honestly, I sometimes wonder whether Aaron Funk is some sort of cyborg who can live on only 2 hours or sleep or so a night based on how much music he releases, especially given his fairly consistent output. The Hospitality EP basically continues right where his last album (Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms) left off, with more of his insanely-detailed beat programming work offset with his more recent attention to more melodic pieces.



"Frictional Nevada" opens the short release (six tracks and just over twenty-five minutes of music), and the five minute track is one of the best things he's done. Over the course of the first two minutes (between one third and one half of the total run length), he layers warm synths, horns, strings, and some keyboard melodies into a delightful swell before an absolutely hammering blast of drum programming shreds the track to bits. From there, those two pieces of the track fight like Jekyll and Hyde, with drum bursts overtaken by more melodic swoons and vice-versa.



"Beverly's Potatoe Orchestra" follows, and it's more standard fare, with rapid-fire beat blurts chunking apart over distorted vocals and playful synth melodies, while "Shoot Myself" again brings some string-synth swells and quieter moments in alongside a short section of spitfire beats. The highlight on the remainder of the EP is the six-minute mind-bender of "Duffy," which takes delight in throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the mix as 8-bit madness, filtered vocal samples, sub-rattling low-end blasts, and of course berserk beats keep the track slamming for its entirety. While it's a little more inconsistent than some of his previous work, there are still enough head-spinning moments on this release to make it worth recommending.



(from almost cool music reviews)"