Aaron Funk has released dozens of discs. He has sold more than 100,000 CDs. He has fans around the world. He has toured across North America and Europe, sometimes performing for festival crowds in the thousands. His music is licensed for TV shows.
More than 1.5 million people have listened to the tracks on his MySpace page. He is, without any exaggeration, one of the most prolific, eclectic, respected and influential artists in contemporary electronic music. He's even formed a band with a bona fide rock star (more on that later). Yet he remains virtually unknown to the vast majority of his fellow Winnipeggers.
And that's just how he wants it.
"I'm stealth," laughs the 34-year-old musician, composer and producer, who records and performs as Venetian Snares. "I don't generally try to draw attention to myself. I like the fact that no one here really knows who I am. Then no one will bug me.
"I'm really not into promoting myself. I've always thought, 'Why don't I just let my music speak for itself and see what happens and where that goes?' There seem to be so many people out there that are 1% music and 99% hyping themselves. They always have the right thing to say, and they always know how to spin something. This seems like a more honourable path to find myself on. I really just like to make music. All the other stuff doesn't matter."
Funk isn't just being humble. You truly would be hard-pressed to find a professional musician who seems less interested in the business end of the music business. Exhibit A is his music itself: It's a challenging, complex and audacious brand of electronica characterized by rapid-fire rhythmic syncopation and surreal, shapeshifting synthesizer lines, offset by a darkly mischievous and often scatological humour (sample album title: Winnipeg is a Frozen S---hole). To the uninitiated, it can sound like a roomful of drum machines and sequencers going off at random. In reality, the long-haired, bearded Funk -- who looks far more like a death-metal guitarist than a computer geek -- spends days, sometimes weeks holed up in his West End home, working for 20 hours at a stretch programming machines and painstakingly sculpting his art.
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"Every little sound, every movement, everything that happens is there because I want it there," he says. "Every single detail down to every molecule. It all starts with an idea I'm hearing in my head. And then I just put it down. At some point I got to a place where I sort of know exactly how to make anything I want, so now it's real comfortable and it's easy."
Easy for him. But it's unlikely to reach a pop chart anytime soon. And Funk's attitude -- somewhere between laissez-faire and deliberately, gleefully subversive -- doesn't help. He usually releases several discs a year, essentially competing with himself. He records under a variety of pseudonyms from the semi-obvious (Snares Man!) to the obscure (Last Step) to throw fans off the scent. He doesn't co-ordinate his tours with his album releases. He doesn't have a line of merch. He rarely does interviews. He seldom performs locally -- and when he does, it's usually a no-big-deal show like tomorrow's DJ set at the Royal Albert, where you can catch him for the princely sum of $5 (or $3 if you were born in January or February). He claims not to know how many albums he's sold -- or even made.
"I really have no idea," he shrugs. "For me, that's not the point of it. Or the fun of it. I know I have released a lot of things. But I haven't really kept track. For me, releasing music is sort of a side-effect. It allows me not to have a job. It pays my bills. But really, I don't give a s---. I just love exploring sounds."
That restless obsession began in childhood, when he displayed a natural talent for piano. "I used to sit and play whatever song was on TV, so the folks got me piano lessons. But I was never really into it that much. I was more into playing dissonant stuff and making sound effects with my voice. I used to ride around my neighbourhood on my bicycle, recording sounds. I had these weird ghetto blasters and I used to record stuff on them and bounce it back and forth. Eventually, I got an old computer that I could sample into and that made things a little more coherent."
Inspired the by the likes of Kraftwerk and Skinny Puppy, Funk began circulating homemade tapes among friends. One found its way to a Minneapolis record label that issued the first official Venetian Snares release, the 1999 EP Greg Hates Car Culture. Shortly afterward, British electronica artist Mike (o-ziq) Paradinas bought the disc during a tour stop in the Twin Cities and lured Funk to his highly regarded Planet Mu label, where he remains to this day.
"Aaron Funk is one of the most talented people making music at the moment," enthuses Paradinas on his label's website. "I just have to get all the tracks he makes. It's an obsession ... (He's) taking what was drum 'n' bass and breakcore totally to another level. Believe."
Over the years, the believers have come. His releases sell somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 copies each -- respectable numbers for weird music on an indie label. His tours have gradually become larger, longer and better attended. In Europe, his songs often surface on TV ("I was in Leeds once and I heard one of my songs on a cooking show!" he laughs). In America, sharp-eyed viewers of CBS series NCIS might have spotted a Venetian Snares banner that pops up now and then in one character's cubicle ("The actor is a big fan," explains Funk. "He says the props people keep taking it away, but he keeps trying to put it up"). And last summer, Funk started up a band called Speed Dealer Moms with another fan and kindred spirit: Guitarist John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It all threatens to raise his profile dangerously close to the mainstream -- something he's not thrilled about. But it won't make him change his ways. He has both a new album (the typically edgy and provocative Filth) and an EP (the comparatively poppy Horsey Noises) due within weeks. By that time, he'll probably have much of his next album already done. He's looking forward to tomorrow's Albert DJ set ("It's awesome to play for $5 -- anyone can go to that").
And even if he is thrust briefly into the spotlight, he knows where he'll be when the glare fades again: "In my laboratory, doing what I love."
