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Venetian Snares – My Downfall (Original Soundtrack)

Another two months passes and it’s time for a new Venetian Snares release. Generally Aaron Funk’s long-players on the Planet Mu label are the ones to watch out for and ‘My Downfall’ is no exception. Very much the companion piece to 2005’s ‘Rossz Csillag Allat Született’, right down to the near-identical art pressing on the disc itself, ‘My Downfall’ feels strangely comfortable as a collection of out-takes which didn’t seem to fit on what might have been his finest album. This new collection features reverb-soaked mood pieces interspersed only very occasionally with Snare’s trademark Amen loop firestorms. The work here is a lot more tender than previous releases, tracks like ‘If I Could Say I Loved You’ really do tug at the heart strings but this is where this album, while considerably more accessible than most of his material, actually falls down (so to speak)

Snares has crafted some of the most painfully beautiful and haunting music for ‘My Downfall’ but it’s not entirely clear what the true intent is. Always a master of genre-subversion and armed with a keen sense of self-awareness the only sticking point on this album is what Snares is actually trying to achieve, it could be a classic case of making this music because he has the technical ability, not because he necessariy believes in it. A vinyl-only release entitled ‘Sabbath Dubs’ was a tongue-in-cheek take on the dubstep phenomenon, this came out probably a fortnight before ‘My Downfall’. A few months prior to that he assumed the alias Last Step and put out an album of warm 303-laced acid tracks, capitalizing on the acid genre revival spearheaded by Aphex Twin in his ‘Analord’ series.

So where does this leave ‘My Downfall’? Either way it’s an interesting and disturbing release. I worry about a guy who can make music of this high quality just because he can and it’s all part of his scatter shot approach to releases. On the other side to that if he really, really means it this time then the man needs help.

Rated: 5 out of 7