| #647 |
|
2003 |
Perilous 647 In an age where bratty punks and insecure rappers sing about alienation and growing up in single parent families, its been a little disappointing that its been such a while since there has been some good horrible electronic music. Not horrible like DJ Sammy ‘Boys Of Summer’ or faux angst of The Prodigy, but proper dark gruesome music. Venetian Snares has done some promising work since his 1999 child killer-themed EP for Hymen called Doll Doll Doll but most has lacked the creepy horror of that seminal EP. But in a very prolific 18 months which has seen the release of at least 4 albums), he has finally brought out two new records that fulfil the promise of Doll Doll Doll. One is the sequel to Doll Doll Doll, another EP dedicated to child murderers and our society’s obsession with the ‘murder of innocents’. Find Candace, again on the Hymen label, features a child’s body in a plastic bag on the cover and brings with it a real aural brutality. Splattercore breakbeats pummel away emerging suddenly from eerie ambient interludes like a mugger with a baseball bat leaping out with ten of his mates, or, a snatch and grab outside a kindergarten . . . random senseless violence. The second Venetian Snares is out on Planet Mu (his most recent LP for them) called Winter In The Belly of The Snake. Not as harsh or assaulting as Find Candace, Venetian Snares awakens the aural equivalent of Halloween, or Freddy in the original Nightmare on Elm St. With out of tune synths, minor key progressions and a crisp spray of chopped hyperspeed Autechre-style beats, Winter is a nasty sinister record in the best possible way. Featuring the first of Snares’ own grim vocals including the opener about his dead father, he even manages to get away with a cover of Danzig’s She. And on Lex comes the long awaited remix EP, From Left To Right, which brings reworkings of selected tracks on Boom Bip’s From Seed To Sun LP. Boards Of Canada take Last Walk Around Mirror Lake and add their Vaseline lens pastoral treatment, looping the a simple keyboard refrain over a stumbling sub 90bpm break and off kilter synth. Venetain Snares, for such a warm relaxed producer like Boom Bip, seems an odd choice but his remix of The Unthinkable turns Buck65s rap into an evil timestretched hoax caller with a mutilated break . . . “where did all the children go?” . . . indeed, its nasty. The last mix comes courtesy of cLOUDDEAD – Boom Bip’s collaboration with Dose One. Soft whispers and Eno-like cocoon ambience evolve slowly into a wash akin to My Bloody Valentine. Frigid on the 23rd see the launch of prolific Adelaide producer Tim Koch’s new album of remixes out on Sydney’s Aural Industries label. Various local and overseas acts have taken on tracks from Koch’s 2001 album Please Don’t Tell Me Thjat’s Your Volvo and remixed them into new and exciting forms. Alongside Koch who will do a live set of his quirky videogame sounds there will be live sets from Couchblip’s Disjunction Reunion and Fourplay’s Raven. And, this week Couchblip bring their crates of records and CDs up the hill to the Hopetoun and set up their monthly Frigid shop with latest releases from the labels they are distributing – Merck, Hefty, Hymen and others – all at ‘special’ prices. The 30th brings the first is possibly a series of Firehouse events with the Firehouse Sound System taking over the reins for the night. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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