Venetian Snares – Doll Doll Doll

Listening to this record in 2024: Zak Bagans, Breakcore Savant

I really wish pressure torture and ATCAD were on this.

offering to trade my Find Candace EP (cover and record VG) for this one. anyone interested?

I wish this got a proper vinyl release with all the tracks from the CD version.

One of the Dollmaker samples is from this Apocalyptica album: https://www.discogs.com/Apocalyptica-Plays-Metallica-By-Four-Cellos/master/28259

Pseudo-music. Venetian Snares is a guy I can admire because he has talent and sometimes uses that to extraordinary ends (like his classical music album).

But there's no soul on this album...its just pounding noise. What is so great about this, I'll never know.

Other than the creepy pedo cover, i love this album.

To everyone who is was talking about how this album is just noise and has "no real message":
Try giving it another listen because im sure its just going over your head.
My favorite track is Pygmalion.

Wow. This is one of Venetian Snares' best works to date. This album pulls samples from all over, ranging from video games and jazz music to gangsta rap and phone calls. The end result of it all is one of the creepiest recordings ever to be mastered to disc.
If you want my opinion, "Dollmaker" is where the album really kicks off. Granted, the three-part intro is really neat, especially "I Rent The Ocean," with its disturbing ambiance and a free jazz session that fits in surprisingly well. But soon after that, you get an album that changes suddenly and seamlessly with just a spoken word, at one minute, a piece of prime-quality ambient punctuated by periods of silence, at the next, full-speed, no-bullshit, heart-stopping breakcore.
"Dollmaker" is a prime example of this. Starting with speedy drums, a jazzy piano, and snippets of "Harvester Of Sorrow" played on cellos, then turning quickly into a dark ambient piece, then, just around the corner...
"I'm gonna murder ya young-style like Jon Benét Ramsey!"
At this point, the song goes at full speed, with Sway and King Tech shouting away. Then, after one last sample, the song slowly but surely closes.
"Befriend A Childkiller" is up next, starting with a fine piece by Phillip Glass. No matter how long it lasts, it can't last forever, right? And it doesn't. With talk of spirits and childkillers, the song speeds on, creating a very disturbing piece, merging straight into "Pressure Torture."
Then you have "Macerate And Petrify," starting off as what "Aegispolis" would have sounded like had it been composed by Edgar Allan Poe, with quick stabs of somebody getting hit and horns, than quickly giving way to a full speed breakcore tune, with distorted and scary samples from "Silence," and then a period of silence in which only brief stabs of a synthesizer, and, with a single sample, back again. Even eerier, it works.
As our closing song, you get the says-it-all "All The Children Are Dead." Slowly starting up, it goes at full throttle, collapsing to become another minimalist piece, and getting back up at full speed, with no momentum lost until the very end, when the song slowly fades away, ending the album just as it should.
The scary part of it all: This is the same man who wrote "Songs About My Cats only months earlier.
I live near a place that deals in dolls. Sales, repairs, creation, everything. After hearing this album, I never looked at it the same way again.

When I first heard this I came extremely close to wetting myself. Like many people at the time (I think it was late 2002) I had never heard anything like it before. Although stuff on Digital Hardcore hinted that such madness is possible, this was a leap from that. The Jon Benet Ramsey information line sample is one of the most demented samples ever used in electronic music. Without a doubt this 12" occupies a very important place in breakcore history, and this will become more and more apparent as the years pass.

As mentioned, this release sounds like noise just for the sake of being evil and crazy, with no real message or soul behind the music. Dark, evil, unrelenting, hard, and fast, this music may appeal to some other crowds, but for those of us who were expecting, as mentioned, an AFX style IDM release, this breakcore sound dominates this release. Personally, I can't stand this "music", and I have since given away my copy of this album.