
VENETIC: Haloed Cat
By Simon Sweetman
The band's website tells you that Venetic play rock music. It also tells you that the band is all over with 'Haloed Cat' being the group's fourth - and apparently final - album. The brainchild of Wayne Stuart McCallum, this Wellington group plays (sorry, played) rock music, but only in the sense that The Tall Dwarfs play folk music. Venetic's music is a strange, but ultimately happy, blend of esoteric electronica and good, honest garage-rock jamming. The addition of electronic textures to a determinedly rock framework can sound cheesy; quite literally tacked on - but the flow here is good. Lyrically and melodically Venetic had me going back to my Schnell-Fenster albums. It's not quite as insidiously lo-fi as The Wendyhouse, nor as studied as Voom, but somewhere between both of those bands lies a vague idea of how Venetic sound. This album has grown on me with each listen. I expect to be enjoying it for some time to come.
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