Greg Hates Car Culture (20th Anniversary Edition)

Breakcore innovator Venetian Snares (also known as Canadian producer Aaron Funk) began making his hyperactive breed of blown-out electronic sounds in the mid-90s, self-releasing cassette albums of his raw early sounds. His first vinyl release came in 1999 with the also raw and unrelenting Greg Hates Car Culture. Shredded jungle breaks in odd time signatures, overpowering distortion, and disruptive samples of dialogue all started laying the foundation for what would become a prolific body of work. Funks music was touched by both a meticulous attention to detail and an irreverent spirit of mischief and derision. Greg Hates Car Culture contained all the fundamental elements of Venetian Snares original signature sounds, and presented them in some of their most electric and visceral forms. Much of the album was performed live to DAT recorder, capturing a single-take energy on already incredibly chaotic songs. The unrelenting Point Blank begins with a grainy sample of someone proclaiming Kill everyone now! before it explodes into a barely cogent rhythmic structure that ties together blasts of noise. The bruised jungle breaks and submerged synths of Boiled Angel might represent the most violent ambient music ever recorded. The album never drops its energy level. Even when the pulsating rhythms become more hypnotic than disorienting (as on bonus track Milk), the songs always build perpetually upwards in rhythmic complexity, textural aggression, and their tendency towards general extremes. Its a dizzying blur, a wild look back at one of breakcores leading minds at the genesis point of what would become a lengthy and prolific career. Even two decades after its release, Greg Hates Car Culture still hits like a psychedelic building demolition. ~ Fred Thomas