Venetian Snares - Detrimentalist

We can awlays 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 IDM sprinkled with clicks and cuts. Among the collection of labels, he has managed to span some of my favorites - Zod, Distort, Sublight, Hymen and of course, Planet Mu. Detrimentalist is Funk's twentieth album, in which he steps away from classical themes sampled and revisited in My Downfall (Planet Mu, 2007), 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. Keep it coming, Funk... We're listening... For similar styles, check out Bong-Ra, Shitmat, End.User, and my new favorite, Igorrr.