Grooves no. 8 by Paul Lloyd

Slightly odd noisecore aficionado Aaron Funk talks little about his music, instead preferring the music to speak for itself. IN his case, that is fine, as Funk's music has a lot to say and does so in mad bursts of densely layered electronic noise that also exhibits an occasionally softer side.

Based in Winnipeg, Funk shares his studio with his four beloved cats. In fact, he wrote the entire Songs About My Cats about them, describing it as "their whole vibe, soft and fluffy and cuddly, while also hypermanic ultra-precise killers." All of the cats' names (Kakarookee, Bobo, Fluff Master, and Chinaski) are immortalized on the track listing and highlighted in red for posterity.

Funk originally recorded hardcore and gabber tracks but moved toward more experimental electronic music when he started playing around with weird time signatures. Songs About My Cats was Funk's second album as Venetian Snares - the first was printf:shiver in eternal darkness/n for Isolate Records in May 2000 - but he's already created densely complex work that skillfully combines disjointed Aphex-style beats, blips, and whirs with an undercurrent of spooky ambience. While the full-on beats still exist in his music, Funk's style has become increasingly abstract, pushing the boundaries on the recent Doll Doll Doll full-length on Hymen.

The unlikely named Funk - yes, it is his real name - is among a minority group of noisecore enthusiasts in his area and unsurprisingly finds himself alienated from the local electronic music scene. "I keep getting booked to play at strange shows here," he says. "Played at some sports bar the other day and got thrown out as soon as I started dropping my new tracks. Did manage to play GG Alin in there though . . . 'Hard Candy Cock.'"

Luckily for him, Funk is not completely isolated from similarly minded musicians. "We all live in the same house now, Casadeloco; there is me, Fanny, and Not Half, and three other freaks that have to deal with 24-hour noise," he says. "[The] rest of the city is all weird cliques, like you have the guys that want to sound like Ninja Tune, then you have the trancetards, then the really limp-dick drum n' bass folks, then the house, all the fucking house everywhere. Not even house with a decent dub vibe, just limp crap. But yeah, I'd say 100 percent all the crazy shit is coming out of this house, for real."

Listening to the multilayered complexity of his music, it is hard to imagine where he might start constructing a track, each one being as equally involved as the last. "Usually I'll have a melody or groove in my head and just extract that and go from there," Funk says. "Sometimes it becomes completely tainted by the time it's a finished piece of music. I'd like to release an ambient record called Gabber Blow Job, with a big stupid-looking skull on the front and some fire, then the music would just be this real nice FM wankery with some birds n' shit."

Funk also claims to create tracks using a sort of Aphex-style lucid-dreaming technique. "Dreams inspire me lately: I slip into this REM-type mode where I'm still awake yet dreaming deeply," he says. "I see screens in this state, it's weird, I see screens in dreams! And the dreams are actually just dry technical shit, like sequencing something, but the screen is all bizarre, as if I'm not seeing it on a monitor in front of me but in my mind's eye."

"And it never looks like any sequencer I've seen before, like, for example, it will all be on an orange felt backdrop and natural polished-stone-type shapes will represent the beats or notes . . . and I place them into the sequence and listen, rearrange, etc."

As our interview progresses it becomes clear that Funk has a genuine interest in visual art: Is this something he could see as a potential outlet for his work? After all, experimental electronic musicians are increasingly collaborating with artists on multimedia design, art installations, and even soundtracks for dance and theater productions. "I'd like to construct a modular room with models of different orifices on the walls and floor where you would stick your feet and fists to alter what is being fed through what," he says. "Sometimes it would shoot primo excellent bass up your leg."

Does he have any thoughts on incorporating these aspects into his own live shows? "When I play locally here, one of my housemates, Seb Filth, does projections on two VCRs with a crossfader. he's always putting together great visuals in his lab. I'd bring him along to foreign shows, but he's too unpredictable."

Having already recorded the acclaimed Making Orange Things with Speedranch, Funk has a further potential collaboration in the pipeline with Schematic's Otto Von Shirach. Already planned for this year is a new album for Planet Mu, Higgins Ultra Low Track Glue Funks Hits 1972-2006, released at the end of May and to be followed by 237 0894, an EP of leftover tracks later in the year.

As it becomes more abstract, trying to describe Venetian Snares' music is a difficult task, one probably best left to the man himself. "I just make the music I would like to hear," he says. "I make music that gives me the crack rush."