What ever happened to Venetian Snares?

[Bubba69]

On 8/16/2023 at 7:35 PM, Summon Dot E X E said:

as far as the dada / random elements to his music

i like them and do the same thing

gotta get that dopamine pumping

i basically like breakcore.

(i had to delete the album art from a couple of his albums on my phone).

(i could see why he'd not want to be associated with this site, the lot of you. )

He used to get almost as much hate here as the flahbulb. People here were so super narrow minded about music on here. imaginary pissing contests between great artists. Looking back they are all amazing and did amazing things in their own ways and made their own impacts.

[hello spiral]

On 8/19/2023 at 5:40 PM, Zephyr_Nova said:

I posted here back in the day.  Had the honour of working with some samples he put together for me as part of a chain-letter music compilation release.  Had 24 hours to take those and make a new track with it.  Only got the part because another artist dropped out last minute, and it was a track-per-day schedule.  Anyway, comp was released, so I mentioned it on the board, and he coasted in saying how much he liked it.  Definitely worth staying up until 7am to complete it.

Rossz was my introduction to Snares because it was displayed at a record store in the listening section.  Had no idea what to expect, and it was unlike anything else I'd heard at the time.  Obviously there are some similarities in the drum programming still to Aphex/SP's old drill 'n' bass stuff, but coming at it from a whole other angle.

was this that ceramic pig comp?

[beerwolf]

On 8/20/2023 at 8:53 PM, Bubba69 said:

He used to get almost as much hate here as the flahbulb. People here were so super narrow minded about music on here. imaginary pissing contests between great artists. Looking back they are all amazing and did amazing things in their own ways and made their own impacts.

Probably everyone was younger and therefore more belligerent (and maybe fuelled by substances). Remember the gap between TCH and Tomorrows Harvest? Dig that thread up and it's like a western bar room brawl. Now? No one's really that bothered and if they are, they are far more polite about it. Lazy fuckers.

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by beerwolf

[Walter Ostanek]

is he still hiding from the taxman?

[Bubba69]

3 hours ago, beerwolf said:

Probably everyone was younger and therefore more belligerent (and maybe fuelled by substances). Remember the gap between TCH and Tomorrows Harvest? Dig that thread up and it's like a western bar room brawl. Now? No one's really that bothered and if they are, they are far more polite about it. Lazy fuckers.

 

Yeah I mean I was in my teens and twenties back then. My post history here is cringe.

[Ivan Ooze]

Come back snares, we're sorry 

[hoggy]

On 8/20/2023 at 6:44 PM, august said:

From hospitality frictional nebula 

long live the Snares

kinda bugs me when people think the speed and difficulty is what makes Snares good (I feel like the blindfold and the rigid presentation kinda suggests that), when to me Last Step is just as amazing - I'd love to see a drum cover of something from 1961, maybe Triple Self Portrait - played with groove and dynamics and feeling

Edited August 24, 2023 by hoggy
wrong track

[drillkicker]

On 8/5/2023 at 10:53 AM, hello spiral said:

Yeah, the absolute death of creativity

Him and aphex are evidence of that, stay away from gear lust kids

This is really true though.  Ive gotten rid of every piece of gear ive ever acquired except for a few guitar pedals.  It always gets frustrating that i cant (easily) change what's inside it and i just go back to my computer and max/msp where i can change everything.

I think steven stapleton also commented on the pitfalls of gear lust in an interview where he talks about lemon kittens.

[Flutternozzle]

 

[hoggy]

3 hours ago, drillkicker said:

This is really true though.  Ive gotten rid of every piece of gear ive ever acquired except for a few guitar pedals.  It always gets frustrating that i cant (easily) change what's inside it and i just go back to my computer and max/msp where i can change everything.

I think steven stapleton also commented on the pitfalls of gear lust in an interview where he talks about lemon kittens.

Surely you can be just as creative with physical gear? It just gives a different kind of interface and a more predetermined scope of patch/sound creation/signal manipulation.. She Began To Cry Tears Of Blood.. Traditional Synthesiser... and the Daniel Lanois albums are some of my favourites by Snares, and the Analord stuff fucking rules

Have you guys considered that maybe their interests just changed musically and it's not like modular synths are like the One Ring magically corrupting their minds? And also approaching middle age, they might have chilled out and their veins are not coursing with adrenaline and cortisol?

[oscillik]

I liked his cameo in Twin Peaks Season 3

[drillkicker]

3 hours ago, hoggy said:

Surely you can be just as creative with physical gear? It just gives a different kind of interface and a more predetermined scope of patch/sound creation/signal manipulation.. She Began To Cry Tears Of Blood.. Traditional Synthesiser... and the Daniel Lanois albums are some of my favourites by Snares, and the Analord stuff fucking rules

Have you guys considered that maybe their interests just changed musically and it's not like modular synths are like the One Ring magically corrupting their minds? And also approaching middle age, they might have chilled out and their veins are not coursing with adrenaline and cortisol?

Tbh ive never heard anything by venetian snares that i liked.  I do have some irl friends who do wicked stuff with eurorack modules but venetian snares making breakcore trax with a huge modular wall seems wasteful to me when people with little portable cabinets are doing cooler stuff (and even building the modules themselves).

[hoggy]

8 hours ago, drillkicker said:

Tbh ive never heard anything by venetian snares that i liked.  I do have some irl friends who do wicked stuff with eurorack modules but venetian snares making breakcore trax with a huge modular wall seems wasteful to me when people with little portable cabinets are doing cooler stuff (and even building the modules themselves).

I’m pretty sure he does stuff with portable cabinets too, I feel like I saw something like that in a live video with Daniel Lanois.

Fair enough you don’t like snares, but that doesn’t mean using the equipment is wasteful - you wouldn’t like it regardless. Who knows what elements were inspired by the huge wall, maybe he made stuff he wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, even if breakcore is not to your taste.

[gnarlybog]

I just listened to "She Began To Cry Tears Of Blood Which Became Little Brick Houses When They Hit The Ground" after initially dismissing it and it really worked for me. Yeah it's same-y, but it's good. The right balance between challenging and enjoyable. I suspect he was going through some heavy stuff during this...
 

[Alcofribas]

On 8/27/2023 at 12:49 PM, drillkicker said:

This is really true though.  Ive gotten rid of every piece of gear ive ever acquired except for a few guitar pedals.  It always gets frustrating that i cant (easily) change what's inside it and i just go back to my computer and max/msp where i can change everything.

i would argue that a computer and software qualify as "gear" and are the main equipment used to make music in the 21st century. i personally think this is a kind of "gear lust." something like the notion that you can "do more," everything is "more efficient" or whatever with a computer is the dominant ideology of music-making in our time. 

to me, characterizing having an interest in non-computer technology as a kind of corrupting "gear lust" is really ignoring how beholden we are to computers. this is a something of a bugbear of mine, not meant with hostility toward you

[hello spiral]

1 hour ago, Alcofribas said:

i would argue that a computer and software qualify as "gear" and are the main equipment used to make music in the 21st century. i personally think this is a kind of "gear lust." something like the notion that you can "do more," everything is "more efficient" or whatever with a computer is the dominant ideology of music-making in our time. 

to me, characterizing having an interest in non-computer technology as a kind of corrupting "gear lust" is really ignoring how beholden we are to computers. this is a something of a bugbear of mine, not meant with hostility toward you

I don't like the lack of creative freedom that comes with the territory of gear. It seems to turn into a dick measuring contest and also most of the focus is on the mechanics of getting your gear to actually fucking work and maintenance etc. It's music guy eq of those dudes who are always taking their cars apart in their driveways every sunday. Spergy compulsion.

A daw to me is a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. Putting gear in the equation is like introducing a spirograph to the mix. 

Or to use another metaphor, wanting to get really good at fancy yoyo tricks. 

And no, if you go down the rabbitholes of gear people on social media, the dominant 'ideology' (aka bragging rights) is always along the lines of #analog #dawless etc

[beerwolf]

On 8/23/2023 at 11:02 PM, Bubba69 said:

Yeah I mean I was in my teens and twenties back then. My post history here is cringe.

Sometimes for me too. it's either pretty good or absolute diabolical. I can break out into a minor sweat when somebody bumps an old thread tbh. Had to edit/delete one the other day on the Squarepusher thread....

Edited August 29, 2023 by beerwolf

[springymajig]

5 minutes ago, beerwolf said:

Sometimes for me too. it's either pretty good or absolute diabolical. I can break out into a minor sweat when somebody bumps an old thread tbh. Had to edit/delete one the other day on the Squarepusher thread....

I cringe at stuff I posted a week prior, regardless of content

Also I thought Venetian Snares was pretty popular hete in his heyday, I don't remember seeing any hate...

I still really like a few of his albums.

[Alcofribas]

31 minutes ago, hello spiral said:

I don't like the lack of creative freedom that comes with the territory of gear. It seems to turn into a dick measuring contest and also most of the focus is on the mechanics of getting your gear to actually fucking work and maintenance etc. It's music guy eq of those dudes who are always taking their cars apart in their driveways every sunday. Spergy compulsion.

A daw to me is a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. Putting gear in the equation is like introducing a spirograph to the mix. 

Or to use another metaphor, wanting to get really good at fancy yoyo tricks. 

And no, if you go down the rabbitholes of gear people on social media, the dominant 'ideology' (aka bragging rights) is always along the lines of #analog #dawless etc

this is an interesting reply, thank you.

there are a couple of things here. i definitely agree that there is a kind of "car guy"/ "hardware guy" thing out there. no denying it. probably like 80% of gearspace is this guy. i also think that there is a definite trend on social media to valorize hardware and "dawless" or whatever. but i think even here we are running into some difficulties parsing out the boundaries here. i think you are describing niche phenomena, whereas almost definitely the vast majority of music being made (in the "west" perhaps) is computer music. i think a trend on social media is a real thing, but social media is already also part of this problem i see, where more and more every facet of our lives is being mediated by one single technology: a computer, a touch scree, a mouse, a keyboard. so the way we make music is the same as the way we write a resume, consume news and political events, hail a cab, mediate our love lives. this, to me, is extraordinarily far from a "blank sheet of paper;" it's indeed an ever-encompassing environment where we live more and more of our lives. 

i would even push back against this idea of a blank slate. not because it's an invalid way to approach making art (it isn't) but because it's a very specific idea about what creativity means. personally, i'm not interested in blank slates. i like to tinker, to mess about, to play. and one plays with what's at hand. with hardware, this activity is literal, physical. to me, it's the play that leads to the freedom, not some sense of a completely blank slate where you can do anything. i like hardware bc it's so different from the world we live in now. the computer is a chore, a mesmerizing piece of glass shining light on my face beckoning me to more more more. i can operate the majority of things in my studio with my eyes closed. many things have big knobs and switches and buttons i can press without even having to "think" really. with a computer i am always looking. i'm beholden to the screen. everything is there. click click click click. i think the computer is an inelegant interface. the touchscreen, the mouse, the keyboard - i genuinely believe these don't hold a candle to throwing a slider or ever so gently tweaking a knob. 

i am by no means saying making computer music is bad or anything like that. but i do think there is a real "fish will be the last to know water" thing going on here. 

[Alcofribas]

1 minute ago, Alcofribas said:

this is an interesting reply, thank you.

there are a couple of things here. i definitely agree that there is a kind of "car guy"/ "hardware guy" thing out there. no denying it. probably like 80% of gearspace is this guy. i also think that there is a definite trend on social media to valorize hardware and "dawless" or whatever. but i think even here we are running into some difficulties parsing out the boundaries here. i think you are describing niche phenomena, whereas almost definitely the vast majority of music being made (in the "west" perhaps) is computer music. i think a trend on social media is a real thing, but social media is already also part of this problem i see, where more and more every facet of our lives is being mediated by one single technology: a computer, a touch scree, a mouse, a keyboard. so the way we make music is the same as the way we write a resume, consume news and political events, hail a cab, mediate our love lives. this, to me, is extraordinarily far from a "blank sheet of paper;" it's indeed an ever-encompassing environment where we live more and more of our lives. 

i would even push back against this idea of a blank slate. not because it's an invalid way to approach making art (it isn't) but because it's a very specific idea about what creativity means. personally, i'm not interested in blank slates. i like to tinker, to mess about, to play. and one plays with what's at hand. with hardware, this activity is literal, physical. to me, it's the play that leads to the freedom, not some sense of a completely blank slate where you can do anything. i like hardware bc it's so different from the world we live in now. the computer is a chore, a mesmerizing piece of glass shining light on my face beckoning me to more more more. i can operate the majority of things in my studio with my eyes closed. many things have big knobs and switches and buttons i can press without even having to "think" really. with a computer i am always looking. i'm beholden to the screen. everything is there. click click click click. i think the computer is an inelegant interface. the touchscreen, the mouse, the keyboard - i genuinely believe these don't hold a candle to throwing a slider or ever so gently tweaking a knob. 

i am by no means saying making computer music is bad or anything like that. but i do think there is a real "fish will be the last to know water" thing going on here. 

also just want to make a comment on the idea that hardware is a huge pain to maintain. this may be true but i believe it is overstated. i also believe that it is another instance where people are not being realistic about computers. i have, for instance, several pieces of gear in my studio that are 30+ years old. some even more. some of these have never been worked on at all. they can be wonky and not work properly, but to me this is ok. that's life. and sometimes when things don't work, that's actually interesting and makes you try things differently. however, some of these work more or less exactly as intended after several decades. the ones i have had serviced basically are good as new and the cost of doing this was a totally reasonable investment imo. 

on the other hand, my computer is always being annoying as fuck. it does weird shit all the time. there is almost no chance whatsoever a computer will last as long as my old synths or outboard gear. and once it's done, it's just completely fucking done. i have an emagic amt8 i've had since 2002 i think. it's worked flawlessly the entire time i had it. however, somehow my mac updated its OS (even though i have auto-updates turned off...hmmm...cool!) and now the amt8 needs to be powered on and off multiple times before the computer decides to recognize it. this is bc of a software "update." computers are constantly moving toward obsolecsence. they can render your studio less and less useful and unlike an old synth it's pretty unlikely you can open up a mac and do anything about this. there are plenty of proprietary formats that are basically unusable now, whereas all the cassettes i've recorded on since the 90s are perfectly useable.

this is all to say that if we want to really understand this issue we would have to look at what the computer is actually doing and not always take it for granted that it's the flawless machine that houses the holy spirit of software

[hoggy]

2 hours ago, gnarlybog said:

it's same-y

Is this like when some people hate broccoli because some people have a genetically different sense of taste?! It's so different-y to me! Cool that you got into it though!

38 minutes ago, hello spiral said:

It seems to turn into a dick measuring contest

[...]

Or to use another metaphor, wanting to get really good at fancy yoyo tricks. 

the dominant 'ideology' (aka bragging rights) is always along the lines of #analog #dawless etc

I would get that if Snares or Aphex made some kind of super "tasteful"/"vintage" house music or something, but it all sounds really fresh and unique to me, sure they have presented it (not all of it) as Traditional Synthesiser Music and Analord, but that sounds a little tongue in cheek to me, considering that Snares makes unorthodox stuff that rushes past all the individual sounds and Analord has "Anal" in it, and also has really weird melodies and textures.

The yoyo tricks thing does make some kind of sense and does make your point of view clearer to me, they both may try to be "impressive" in some way, which can be pedantic and probably is not the best dominant tendency to have for a musician, but at the same time, all performers probably do need an idiosyncratic dose of interest in impressing people, which while maybe distasteful, is fine by me if the way that they do that is by making stuff that they are genuinely excited to make, which is the vibe I get.. sorry to say this but I get more of the boring "virtuoso" vibe from some of Squarepusher tbh (though to be clear I absolutely love some of his stuff)

Like Dali - he had that tendency to be showy, but his paintings can still create uniquely seasick/horny vibes that are unique to him (even if Dorothea Tanning was better imo)

[hoggy]

20 minutes ago, springymajig said:

I cringe at stuff I posted a week prior, regardless of content

I cringe at stuff I'm currently posting, before I post it haha

[Freak of the week]

pure genius

[cern]

I was listen to most of his albums the other day.. 
My favorites always gonna be Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolded and Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms 
But after a while when I have listened to VSnares I get really exhausted of the break coring sounds same all the time. 

I don't say his music is bad, is quite the opposite! His project "Last Step" Is more something that I can listen to alot and never gets boring.

I love the album Sleep 
 

 

[Ivan Ooze]

This dude got so much awesome music, absolute legend.

I'll never forget this one gig i saw, just a constant artillery strike of broken hate amens. I tought people on drugs were gonna die

Edited August 29, 2023 by Ivan Ooze