Your Face

Album review

On his 2015 EP Your Face, Canadian breakcore linchpin Aaron Funk (aka Venetian Snares) continues his obsession with crystalline melodies, dilapidated beats, and absurdist humor. In terms of his vast back catalog, this EP is stylistically reminiscent of albums like Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding or Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms, where miniscule shards of laser-cut rhythms are smashed into deconstructed video game melodies and arranged into obtuse time signatures. As ever, Funk remains a master at building hyper-intense sound constructions filled with micro-edited sound bursts and melodies that are simultaneously pretty and frightening. It takes a certain type of person to be able to process Funk's overwhelming brand of jagged, rapidly morphing sound, and sometimes with his music it's best to just give up trying to make sense of it and just be amazed at how bizarre and brilliant it is. Even when the beats are at their most sparse, such as "Misericordial," they're still convoluted and extremely hard to follow. The EP leads off with the epic "Your Face When I Finally," which features a gleefully vulgar sung interlude in line with the overdriven vocals on the previous two Snares full-lengths, and the disc ends with a "Glass Version" of the same track, with its mystical melody played on what sounds like a glass harmonica (or perhaps the version is named in tribute to Philip Glass). "Red Orange 2" is the release's most breakbeat-heavy track, but its complex piano and synth melodies aren't as rave-influenced as his more jungle-leaning albums like Detrimentalist. Your Face is a thoroughly exciting 31 minutes and excellently demonstrates how unique and mind-boggling Venetian Snares' exquisitely crafted compositions are.

© Paul Simpson /TiVo