Venetian Snares. Click here to view flickr.

Venetian Snares
Thursday 20th January 2005
93 Feet East, Brick Lane, London E1

Well it seemed like a good place to start....After a Christmas spent hibernating in cricklewood, it only felt right that I should eventually venture beyond the NW2 postcode and hang out with young people. And where better than the piss-ridden pakistani-flooded streets of Brick Lane. Ever since the local Thameslink line stopped going to Farringdon, the districts of Shoreditch / East London just seem that ever distant. Which is the way I like it.

The cold, purple, cavernous interior of 93 Feet East always seemed uninviting and repellent. Like a church hall or some place dealing with officialdom, it felt perfunctory and I treat it as such. I wish I'd stayed at home. But somehow, the punishing audio-buggery of Venetian Snares just seemed too good to miss.

Soon enough, Mr. Funk takes to the stage, looking ever like the Nordic Viking of Noise. Whilst Planet Mu labelmate Chevron bobbed vigorously behind his laptop to a largely indifferent crowd. Then the hour long descent into power electronics begins. Moody classical ghosts skitter around timid breaks before giving way to bursts of skull-shredding noise. The amen opacity is notched up a percent, as rhythms collapse, melt, reform and tear away. Melody is sparse but effective and by the time fully formed gargantuan breakbeats have entered the four walls, the freefall has begun.

Don't even bother trying to identify anything, being familiar with Aaron's repertoire meant I had a good go, but nothing remains intact. Everything is taken through the Venetian grinder until it forms pure unrefined gabba. High velocity beats, each more urgent than the last, start to really test the sub-standard sound system.

Groups of well-heeled foreign loungers from the party next door poke their head around the corner in apprehensive curiosity. In the audience, skinny white guys strip and form shapes with their torso's near the front. The stage is invaded by people who dance like they're selling nails. But it doesn't really matter; this isn't shared aggression, more like a musical body reset. Our souls cleansed, ready for whatever 2005 brings us.