Venetian Snares - Songs About My Cats FLAC

I cried a little @ the opening seq...will order me some cats for sure!

Really solid album!

The prolific Venetian Snares writes SONGS ABOUT MY CATS, and sure enough, the felines have their say, in timestretched and manipulated samples, even as the ambient "Chinaski" veers off into its crazed breakbeat, though it of course doesn't stay there. Chaos and randomness are his calling cards, and "Nepetalactone" offers those in spades. Hints of melodies come in and out, like the singing on "Poor Kakarookee," but it's secondary to the other noise surrounding the track. "Fluff Master" wanders at its start, but then the feedback and bass drops stomp in like Godzilla, even if the melody isn't totally crushed. "Bobo," on the other hand, is almost all percussion until it drifts out on a creepy note. The plucked lines of "Pouncelciot" add a classical element, as do the fake strings of "Lioness." "Cleaning Each Other" has little hints of Latin jazz and the Meow Mix theme song, but like everything else, they appear and disappear. Kind of like cats themselves, if you think about it...

While chatting with Aaron at a party in Saskatoon in the early 00s he gave me a cdr with tracks from this release and other odd noise on it. Our cat Mungo Gerry was very confused by the music on this disc. He would plant himself in front of one of the speakers and turn his head to the side with a quizzical expression whenever I played Chinaski.

This is music for cats, and incidentally people.

This is also my first Vsnares outing, and i have to say it is outstanding. It is much more approachable than doll doll doll, a previous album, and recieves 5/5 from me. Many people think of this as breakcore, but it is really glitchcore, with sliced up manic beats and half of the drums used aren't anywhere near the conventional breakcore style. 'Chinaski' is a perfect opener, starting with suprisingly beatiful cat wails and organic beauty, which evolves and evolves, but thoughtfully keeping the melody constant, rather than some other breakcore. It is one of my favourite tracks. Katzesorge pt. 1 is a simple piano song that seems to try to imitate cats walking on the keys. Then nepalactone comes. This is, unfortunatley, rather boring until nearly halfway, when it starts getting into some wonderful awesomeness. Poor kakarookee is for me the overture of the album. For bertha rand is an ambient short piece which has some weird sampling. Breakfast time for baboons is also one of the best on the album. It has followable rythms (i don't really care, but some people might like that.) with a great double bass samples, making it a surprisingly funky and dancable track. Fluff Master is a funny track that reminds me of a cat who would be called fluff master, with kinda funny melodies and beats in it. Bobo is not exactly an outstanding song, it is a little boring. Katzesorge pt 2 is Katzesorge pt 1 with a low drone in the background. Pouncelciot has an improvisational jazz section which sounds ok with the breakbeats, then kakenrooken stivlobits comes to clean up what fluff master left over, with a name that reminds me of germans and a sound that reminds me of cats walking around with paint-wet paws. Lioness is a beautiful track with harpsichord-like synths. Cleaning each other is one of the best tracks too, with cat meows in the middle. Look is only made for the stereogram. But overall, this is an awesome breakcore dedication to cats.

Highly, highly recommended. Especially, as MadMusicBox wrote before me, if this is your first exposure to Venetian Snares. The quality of the sound recording is outstanding, and though it is incredibly harsh in places (which you of course knew to expect), it's a great deal more sophisticated than some of his other more straightforward breakcore/gabber stuff. The insane rhythms which everyone talks about are tempered by either pretty ambient tones in the background, or samples that he downtunes or uptunes -- think of like an actual physical magnetic tape being slowed down or sped up by hand -- to produce the changes in pitch. Absolutely fantastic.

Enjoy!

I would suggest this album as a first for new fans. The album is a neat blend of a lot of things that Venetian Snares would later use, ranging from improvised piano to time signatures he doesn't normally work with. to even hired musicians and unusual methods of data storage. My favorites are:
Chinaski: This opener sets the album right with its beautiful ambient melody. But that can't last for long, right? Right. Within little time, Venetian Snares' frantic drumbeat jumps into the fray, not as much smashing up as playing alongside the meowing cats and simple tune. The perfect way to start off your day!
Nepetalactone: This work speaks volumes. A bizzarre glitch track, a wedding of unusual computer noises, a melodic synth and... opera singers!? Yes, opera singers! The track continues for about four and a half minutes, at which point it becomes...
Poor Kakarookee: Indeed a nice one. This track is a lot more melancholy than Nepetalactone, focusing a little more on the ambient and the opera. It keeps your attention from beginning to end.
Lioness: Beautiful. Just plain beautiful. Gives Aphex Twin's early works a run for their money. You would have to hear it to believe it. It's a straight-up ambient song that seems to have been carried down by angels. The strongest track on the CD by far.

Not the most impressive album from Venetian Snares, but it's grown on me a bit since I first bought it. The most immediate problem with this one is that it's too self-indulgent and quirky, with roughly half the album consisting of disposable piano twinkling and cats meowing. There are a few bright spots if you can get over the nonsense (particularly tracks 7, 8, and 11), but they're not enough to save this from being a pretty crap album by any standard.

This was the first Venetian Snares album I ever heard, and it is what got me hooked. From the first track, "Chinaski", with its soothing pads and organs decimated by complex glitchy beats, the album is a sublime mix of IDM, dissonance, jazz influences and just pure harshness, as in "Breakfast Time for Baboons" and "Fluff Master". All of the tracks have something unique about them, from the just plain weird hallucination-reminiscent "Nepetalactone" to the annoy-your-neighbours "Pouncelciot" with its heavy vocoded snares and cacophonous saxophones. All in all, this is one of Venetian Snares' best albums, if not the absolute best. Granted, it's not to everyone's taste due to its constant assault of high pitched noise, glitch and abuse of natural instruments (there is a faint obsession with piano throughout). If you're into abstract music or Venetian Snares in general, you have to give this a listen. It's a unique offering.

Concept albums....echhh. Probably the least enjoyable or not impressive release by Vsnares. Representative for the learning curve in early Planet Mu releases (which it was). If you dont like cats (a lot) you will hate this release. If you dont like high pitched, stabbing feedback you wont like this release. Much of the songs are sonically inseperable from each other. Would have made a better ep.

The Last track 'Look' is not a 'normal' song.
If you 'see' this track with a spectrographic software you can easily discover hidden images of cats heads !!
This is the same processus like aphex twin's head on the 'Windowlicker EP' (track 2 (equation))