As Venetian Snares, Canadian producer Aaron Funk has long been interested in the possibilities of grating audio, claustrophobic arrangements, and unnerving melodic themes. His vast output of sonic explorations stretches all the way back to the late ’90s and boasts some 50 or so releases. It is also patently restless and somewhat lopsided; even when Funk hits his stride in the world of glitchy, mutated breakbeat and jungle (see: Winter in the Belly of a Snake, Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding, Detrimentalist), he always veers toward a new tangent—like, say, fucking with classical music, gabber, or reggae—that yields entirely mixed results. The Fool the Detector EP (his third release in under a year) is a brief coalescence of Venetian Snares’ various stylistic proclivities, which is to say that it’s just as frantic and uneven as his discography on the whole.

Opener “Ego DSP” sounds more or less like a revisiting of the excellent “Dad,” a cut from 2002’s Winter, albeit one less foreboding and inspired. Funk’s vocals sound flat and hokey when delivering awkward lyrics like, “I know the weight of the curse on you’s heavy,” and his everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to the production offers little to grab hold of. The music works better when the wealth of ideas crammed into each piece is pared down a touch, as is the case on the title track and “Chriohn.” Even then, Venetian Snares’ sadistic need to disorient his listener by jumping from moments of sparse melody to barrages of high-frequency electronics and fragmented rhythms tends to get in the way of simply making a good track. By the time the aimless noise wankery of “Index Pavillion” finishes its fourth minute, it wouldn’t be inconceivable that jarring his audience was Funk’s primary intention all along.