Venera, comprising experimental composer Chris Hunt and Korn guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer, are behind one of the year’s most compelling and adventurous albums. Joined by a love of dark textures and downbeat tempos, Chris and James’ approach is one of controlled improvisation – with pieces allowed to flourish, before being carefully edited into their finished form.
Released via Mike Patton’s ever awesome Ipecac label (Mr Bungle, Peeping Tom, Melvins etc.), Venera’s self-titled debut draws on a range of influences, from chilling industrial soundscapes to post rock, via the paranoia of Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. Adventurous and boasting guest spots from a number of vocalists (including HEALTH, Deantoni Parks, Allan Johannes, and VOWWS), all of whom brought their own unique slant to proceedings, Venere’s debut is a truly remarkable album, and one that will be gracing our decks for years to come (you can read our full review here).
We were lucky enough to catch up with Chris, who took some time to talk to us about how the album came into being. Read on and meet Venera.
The basis of your work is, I believe, improvisational – given that the nature of electronic music tends to involve employing a range of devices to get the sounds and textures you want, do you have a core set up that you use in those initial jams, and then expand from there?
The set ups change from session to session, but they usually involve some kind of drum machine and James’ pedal board. In the beginning of the process we usually hope to suggest myriad directions without going too far into focusing on single ideas.
You’ve mentioned elsewhere that a core part of the final album is the selection and editing of those initial jams – but it can be quite a challenging and disciplined process self-editing in that way. Is that something you found challenging at the outset, or have you always been able to cut down your work to its essence?
I appreciate a process-oriented approach so I don’t find it challenging, but it is definitely time consuming. I just try move through the material intuitively as best I can and group things, create forms. Sometimes the essence is clear at the origin, sometimes it takes 100 hours of mining.
Did you and James have any discussions prior to the any of the jams to establish any sort of broad emotion or theme for a given piece, or did the pieces evolve spontaneously, without any sort of contextual anchor?
No, we typically just start and when we feel tired, we stop. We have a great deal of overlapping interest in texture, emotion, intensity so it’s fluid when we’re writing. When we add additional sounds and start to finish tracks we may talk about some specific ideas.
You’ve worked with an array of vocalists on the album – did you have any set criteria as to who you wanted to work with, or particular attributes that you were looking for?
Not really, we want to work with vocalists that have singular visions and are willing to explore with us.
Did any of the pieces change as a result of a vocalist coming on board? For example, did you find them interpreting the work in unexpected ways that then inspired you to make changes of your own, or were the pieces pretty mapped out by the time they recorded their parts?
The pieces were all pretty mapped out once they went to the vocalists. Rizz added a couple of piano notes in “Hologram” and Jake added some synth texture in “Ochre”, but otherwise everything was fully formed when they wrote and sang.
Who wrote the lyrics for the vocal pieces? Was that you, or did you give the vocalists a free hand to create something based on what they heard?
The vocalists all wrote their own lyrics. And they all wrote towards similar themes which is inspiring to us.
You’ve found a home on Ipecac which is, quite honestly, the perfect place for Venera – did you set out to form a partnership with Ipecac, or were there other labels in which you had an interest?
Ipecac was the main label we wanted to approach. We both have great admiration for Mike Patton’s work and the label’s catalog, and we knew they would be supportive of the project for what it is. It all came together smoothly.
Having edited and arranged the songs, how did you approach sequencing the album in order to make it ebb and flow in the way that it does? It plays out like a survival horror, with voices emerging in the darkness, and I wondered if you had a specific approach in your mind as you sat down to order the album.
I try and make intuitive choices on sequencing. Then we collectively discuss if anything needs to move. It’s one of my favorite parts of the process because at this stage I feel that the narrative can be shaped. It typically oscillates between abstract, architectural, image-based with how the sequencing feels. I appreciate that you thought survival horror, I don’t recall considering this image specifically but there is certainly tonal overlap.
The artwork for the album is disconcertingly beautiful – reminiscent of H R Geiger’s work. How involved were you in its creation and how important to you is the representation of your work in this way – do you still think in terms of physical formats?
This is the work of Samanta García (@dark___mesh on ig). She’s a tremendous artist with such a unique vision and we’ve been lucky to work with her since the beginning of the project. Samanta really helped explore and expand the world of Venera by creating a great deal of concept art and textures long before the music and album artwork was finished. James and I both worked closely with her to select images and directions that we felt resonated as an album cover. Once the album was finished Anthony Ciannamea (EFFIXX) joined on primarily to create videos for the album but he also finished the layout and contributed additional artwork in the physical editions. Anthony and Sam are both amazing and it has been fulfilling to work with them both on the visual universe of this project.
Given that James has significant other commitments, do you see this as a project that may play live, or is it very much a studio-bound collaboration?
There is a lot of material so we definitely are excited to continue releasing sounds, but we will also play live. Keep an eye out.
Thank you very much for your time. It was a pleasure to review the album and to try to find a way to (hopefully) capture some of its dark majesty.
Thank you Phil, we very much appreciate your support!
Venere’s amazing debut is out now via Ipecac
