The idea that Venetian Snares might release anything you could describe as "traditional" boggles the mind a bit, but like much in the Snares catalogue, the title of his new record gleams like a trap for the unwary. Since he introduced himself in the early '00s with a brace of rapid-fire records on Planet Mu, Aaron Funk has carved a singular path. He once claimed to have recorded his early works while coming down from crack cocaine; he has sampled Bartók, Billie Holiday, and Elgar (all on his outstanding 2005 LP Rossz Csillag Alatt Született), and once made an entire record about his cats titled, in a rare straightforward gesture, Songs About My Cats. Visually, Funk in no way fits the mold of your everyday IDM egghead. A man mountain with lank hair and unkempt beard, he more resembles a burly woodcutter, or a mad monk: the Winnipeg Rasputin.
Still, in this case there is no suggestion we should take Venetian Snares at anything other than his word. Traditional Synthesizer Music, explains Funk, was created and performed live on a modular synth "with no overdubbing and no editing." If the result still sounds like a logical continuation of his previous work, that's probably because this sort of hardware has long been a part of his playbook. Certainly, this isn't the record where Snares starts making dreamy hippy kosmische. The abrupt opener "Dreamt Person v3" takes us into broadly familiar Snares territory: an unceasing torrent of squiggly, scattershot breaks pinging across the frame, pursued by slow, gloaming synths that float about like jellyfish.
Funk's music often sounds so meticulous and precise that it can be surprising to learn it has improvisational or random elements. But like, say, Autechre—well-known for their algorithmic tinkering—or another modular synth enthusiast, Aphex Twin, Funk embraces chaos as a compositional method. A complex process of patch-building has introduced a random factor into these structures, allowing for surprises or "unforeseen progressions." The titles—things like "Goose and Gary v2" and "Anxattack Boss Level 19 v3"—indicate that these tracks are not fixed in stone but malleable, each track charting one particular path through a chain of possibilities.
Incidentally, this is one of the more beautiful Snares records in recent memory, relaxing some of the more tiring qualities of his music—the unrelenting abrasiveness, the taste for a certain gynecological grotesquery—in favor of moments of relatively straight prettiness. He will never qualify as "easy" listening, of course: "Slightly Bent Fork Tong v2" laces its globular synth-funk with warped chimes and ringing bell tones, while electronics groan and harrumph deep in the bowels of an inscrutable jitter titled "She Married a Chess Computer in the End." But even while it's being difficult, Traditional Synthesizer Music feels relatively palatable by Snares standards. The album's analog genesis lends it a cushioned wooziness, making the manic energy more palatable in the long haul.
Last year, Funk tweeted that he was in "very serious financial trouble," directing his followers toward his Bandcamp (they followed his cue, filling the Bandcamp chart with Venetian Snares albums, and shortly afterwards Funk repaid their loyalty with a pay-what-you-want album titled Thank You for Your Consideration). Looking at the gigantic rig he's assembled on the video to "Magnificent Stumble v2," you can sort of see where all those IDM dollars might have gone. But where some musicians get lost inside the labyrinth of modular synth building, Snares seems adept in harnessing these elemental energies and bending them to his will. Traditional Synthesizer Music feels not so much traditional as a refresh: a suite of music that is crafted and ferociously complex, but at its root a pure and primal thing, high on its own chaos.
