When listening to
My Love is a Bulldozer, it’s hard not to wonder if music is actually supposed to sound like Funk’s catastrophic creations. It’s difficult to stomach an album which seems like the aural equivalent of the cover of Swans’
Filth if the grimace belonged to Richard D. James. It’s got to be a joke, right? I mean, Aaron Funk sings and screams so loudly at times that the recording clips painfully (most noticeably during “Your Smiling Face” but also on tracks like “1000 Years”). The music slips ungracefully between weepy, lethargic strings and insane drill’n’bass as Funk’s creepily endearing voice turns harsh and abrasive. The album’s title track - by most accounts its centerpiece - features Funk crooning about how the song’s target is the only one who can “make [his] dick feel like this” behind an assault of chiptune gone bad and Venetian Snares’ trademark brand of haywire jungle beats. Worst of all,
My Love is a Bulldozer is consummately unmemorable. I mean, how the hell are you supposed to internalize any of Funk’s supremely discordant melodies and drum contusions?
Now would be the time where a better reviewer than I could probably get at exactly what Venetian Snares is going for with a release like this, but I’m just as stumped as I assume everybody else is. I can guess, of course. It’s possible that Funk utilizes his utterly unforgiving breakcore in order to highlight the more palatable moments featured here, like the rays of light shining through the trash can snares of “She Runs.” Maybe, much like Aphex Twin before him, Funk is more interested in the creation of the pieces than the pieces themselves - the absurd amount of work required to twist and tweak the drums to exactly the point he wants is a sort of masochistic reward in and of itself. Or maybe Venetian Snares simply doesn’t give a sh
it anymore, that his greatest pleasure is watching listeners try to suffer through his noise bombs and that
My Love is a Bulldozer showcases some of the most intentionally unlistenable music possible for the sake of existing. Whatever Funk’s motivation in pumping out yet another breakcore grenade in his long line of breakcore grenades,
My Love is a Bulldozer is at the very least an engaging listen - make of that what you will.
