Venetian Snares
Find Candace
Looking at the mammoth
discography of Venetian Snares, it would be easy to think that Aaron Funk had
been releasing records since before he could walk. Amazingly, though, this act has only been going for a few years,
managing to record and release an endless supply of successful records at a
rate that could be considered prolific, at the very least. He has also managed to keep each release
incredibly fresh and varied from the last, from the full-on noise assault of Making
Orange Things through the tripped experimentalism of 2370894 to the darker,
reflective tone of Winter in the Belly of a Snake. It seemed only natural, then, that he would
eventually run out of ideas and, sadly, Find Candace is the release that
sees him hit a cul-de-sac of creativity.
Conceptualised as a sequel to
2001’s Doll Doll Doll, it comes in a similar package with, yet again,
the twisted design work of Trevor Brown.
It also contains similar themes, track names and even opens with a remix
of the former album’s “Befriend a Child Killer” that immediately alerts us to
the fact that we are in very similar territory. Indeed, this opener does not even improve on the Doll Doll
Doll formula by much: it still retains the same broken drum patterns and
dark strings, the only real difference I can detect is that the drum samples on
Find Candace are much more acoustic sounding than before, emphasising
the jazzy nature of the tracks (especially on the laid-back “Children’s Limbo”,
which is unfortunately muted, due to an overuse of samples from The Others)
The album certainly has its
moments, though such as the sombre, brooding atmospherics and mangled,
pitch-shifting beats of “Yor”; the tinkling, DSPed melodies of “Dolleater” and
the dark organ tones of closing track “Bind Candace”. In fact, when considering this album and its prequel, I find that
Find Candace offers a much more coherent and well-rounded listening
experience, making it seem almost like a re-draft of the former album. This makes me wish that Snares would slow
down his work rate to concentrate more on the quality control of his releases,
as opposed to hastily firing out every track he writes.
As it stands, Find Candace
is not a bad album; in fact, it is probably one of Venetian Snares’ best
releases. The main problem I have is
that for fans and owners of his previous work [such as myself] it does not
offer anything new and merely revises a previous formula to bring it up to the
standard it should have been. Newcomers
to his work would be well advised to investigate this latest effort as a
concise summary of his oeuvre, but existing fans should really save their money
for his next release…probably due any day now.
Gavin Lees
27.03.2k3