Venetian Snares

Aaron Funk, the Winnipeg cat behind the increasingly popular Venetian Snares moniker, is currently one of the hottest, most lauded names in electronic music. Over the past six years he has released no less then 11 albums of speedy drum&bass and intense, often grating melodies to smack the fuck out of anyone who crosses its path. Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett adds yet another dimension to Funk’s constantly evolving vision. Inspired by a trip to Hungary during a recent European tour (all of the track titles are in Hungarian and the album’s title means Born Under a Bad Star), he has recorded his most emotionally full album to date, mixing his signature drum&bass with layers of Baroque strings that provide a serene and pristine seriousness to Funk’s flurry of rhythm. It’s a moody album that moves through contemplative string-centric tracks, saving his Squarepusher-esque rhythmic onslaughts for epic tantrums like "Hajnal” and "Ketsarku Mozgalom.” This combination makes for a decent sound, but if Venetian Snares is guilty of anything, it’s stretching out his concepts too far — what could have been one killer track, or a really solid EP, has been drawn out to fill an entire album, making Rossz Csillag a trifle more exhausting than it perhaps should be.