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Review: Poemss – Poemss

Anyone who has experienced the music of Aaron Funk (more commonly known as the man behind Venetian Snares) in full flow will be aware that it is about as bracing as the weather that has been recently tearing through the producer’s Canadian home town of Winnipeg.

In this release, however, gone are the harsh, synth-heavy sections; intense, chopped up breakbeats and erratic time signature changes. This could be due to the influence of collaborator Joanne Pollock, a relatively new name to electronic music, with only a few independently released tracks on Bandcamp and SoundCloud.

Together they have created an ethereal and dreamlike landscape; its synthesized textures just abstract enough to allow the listener to drift off into it, whilst the occasional jarringly surreal lyric on tracks like ‘Ancient Pony’ bring moments of lucidity. The lo-fi vocals given by both artists have a distinctly Warpaint-esque sound to them, whilst the nocturnal atmosphere calls to mind Moby’s 2011 release, De- stroyed. Though some tracks such as ‘Losing Meaning’ feature more activity, at times even the most sparse musical textures seem to retain the intensity of Funk’s breakcore output.

Poemss is a vehicle for abstract escapism best experienced late at night, in its entirety, as loud as possible.

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