Breakcore veteran Aaron Funk, a.k.a. Venetian Snares, is back with a new album that's been handed the hefty title of She Began to Cry Tears of Blood Which Became Little Brick Houses When They Hit the Ground. According to a short statement Aaron posted along with the new album via Facebook, this album is "about what it’s like to exist, to not exist, to exist otherwise, absolute chaos." Fans of Venetian Snares' back catalog already know chaos is one of Aaron's specialties – that much about this new record feels like familiar territory. However, the existential theme of this new record might be influencing some of the vast, dystopian atmospheres surrounding the incomprehensibly complex glitches and rhythms that ran through every cut I hit in my cursory listen of this project.
While the album is dizzying in its intricacies, it's more evocative to my ears than it is soulless and calculated. After all these years, Aaron hasn't lost touch with his sense of groove, and nearly every track here carries a dark, moody tone. And the contrast between the sputtering electronics in the foreground and the glacial, haunting tones floating in the background is wonderfully stark – it makes me music feel almost like it exists in a three-dimensional plane. It's been about twenty years since Aaron started recording under the Venetian Snares name, and he's still pushing the compositional limits of electronic music.