Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.
Venetian Snares: Cubist Reggae (Planet Mu, 5/23/11)
Venetian Snares: “The Identification Circles Levitate”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Venetian_Snares_The_Identification_Circles_Levitate.mp3|titles=Venetian Snares: “The Identification Circles Levitate”]Hajduch: Electronic surrealist Venetian Snares (a.k.a. Aaron Funk) returns with his zillionth release for Planet Mu. Cubist Reggae has a title that gets right to the point: this is a four-track EP that deconstructs reggae samples down to a nervous, amorphous tangle of sound. Largely free of the jungle brutalism common to Snares’ sound, Cubist Reggae favors a (relatively) slow burn, with lots of space to breathe (when that space is not being filled with deep-voiced threats of violence).
Morrow: You never know what to expect from a Snares release; it could be something that he’s never done or something that he’s done a bunch. Thankfully, this falls in the former category, and it’s fun to hear what reggae and dub can become when in his hands.
Those deep-voiced rumblings make the first track much creepier than its otherwise benign (yet weird) structure would dictate. But that’s about the end of the creepiness, and the next three songs — though a bit eerie at times — are a challenging IDM take on a tired genre.
