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Venetian Snares & Daniel Lanois - Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois (Timesig/Planet Mu, 2018)

Melvins and Lustmord released "Pigs of the Roman Empire" some...many years ago. Also an odd-duck-but-it-could-work collaboration. Much like Venetian Snares and Daniel Lanois here. Anyway not long after it came out King Buzzo made the comment that "some of the things people think he did were actually us and some of the things people think we did were him". That's the sign of a good collaboration, when all limbs get absorbed into one megalithic beast and the entity operates as an indiscernible One. Such is not the case for M. Funk & M. Lanois. It very much, almost constantly, sounds exactly like Venetian Snares' breakcore playing over Lanois' guitar glossolalia. Lanois is in dreamy, shimmery, ambient mode here, very cinematic and nuanced, and in fact it sounds like it would make a good listen on its own. Snares (whose game I know well and typically enjoy) just slathers his own beats atop with little regard for anything else that's going on. I know Snares is a smart, versatile and thoughtful musician - I guess that's why I'm disappointed he seems to be the one making zero effort to engage with Lanois. On a couple of tracks the duo come together well enough - the 9-minute centerpiece "United P92" does showcase Lanois' guitar snaking and unfurling around Snares' prickly beats and "Mothors Pressroll P131" is so furiously aggressive it almost beats you into submission. But overall the two just don't connect like they should which is too bad.

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