Speed Dealer Moms

Speed Dealer Moms are/were an electronic music project, consisting of John and Aaron Funk aka Venetian Snares, a prominent and critically acclaimed electronic music artist. Chris McDonald – the man behind The Alison Project, an outfit that makes electronic music influenced by drone, horror, psychedelics and video games – joins the Moms on a regular basis; when he’s not making custom analog synths.

Beginnings

The musicians met when John attended a couple of Funk’s shows in Europe. He previously did hint in some interviews that some of his favourite artists are Funk, Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) and a couple of other experimental electronic music aficionados. Over the time, they became friends and really clicked together.

Photos of “2008 Modular Jam At Casa Cyrusrex” held at the place of have been uploaded to the Internet in June 2008. John and Aaron were amongst the musicians creating electronic music right there, at the home of the Los Angeles-based electronic musician Cyrusrex.

According to various sources, the Moms already had over eight hours of material in August 2008, when John spent some time in Winnipeg, recording with Funk and having had some custom equipment built for him. However, before January 2009, they kept low profile; their music page did not contain any tunes and band members were listed with a bunch of random women’s names. The explanation behind it was cryptic.

all of our tunes are too long to fit on the side of a record or in a myspace player so you have to imagine what they sound like. that might be better anyways because you could imagine them to sound however you like!

Live Performance Attempt

In January 2009, it was revealed that the Speed Dealer Moms would headline that year’s Bang Face Weekender, held at the Camber Sands former holiday resort in Kent, England; with a live show on Roland TB-303, TR-808 as well as the custom equipment.

*SUPERSTAR ACID COLLABORATION ALERT*
John Frusciante (Legendary guitarist of the RHCP) & Aaron Funk(Venetian Snares) are joining forces for the first time to bring us a live 303 & 808 analogue show as…SPEED DEALER MOMS

In an interview given to Winnipeg Sun, Aaron Funk appeared not to be enthusiastic about the fuss.

“People seem to be making a huge deal out of it. I feel kind of weird about it. I am kind of concerned about having to deal with people who just want to check us out because of John’s brand name.

At this time, John himself had not said anything about this project, other than vaguely mentioning that he’d be “doing a show but that it will be different” in an interview with the French magazine Guitarist & Bass. This explanation lost on its secrecy as John’s interview was published two months after SDM’s live performance was announced.

With great enthusiasm, the Moms went to the Bang Face Weekender. Sadly, the performance was cancelled on the day it was supposed to be held – the 26th of April – due to equipment malfunction. The organisers apologised to visitors and shared photos of the Moms’ “sick” equipment with the world.

Within a couple of days, another, 1-day-festival named Bang Fest was scheduled for August that year. Unfortunately, that event got cancelled too, due to some of the local folks not being too happy about a rave party being held in their neighborhood.

Their Only Release, So Far

In a casual conversation with a fan in July 2009, John stated that he’s having a lot of fun working with Aaron Funk; but that he doesn’t like promotion and economic side of music, so that’s why they had no record plans. He also added that he’s enjoying making electronic music, but that he’d like to keep it to himself. His friend Omar Rodriguez-Lopez worded it differently – in an interview with Argentinean magazine Rockzone, he stated that Speed Dealer Moms have over 80 songs recorded, but that John does not want to publish anything as it’s just the “creation time”.

Despite all of the above, plans to release the first Speed Dealer Moms recording were announced in October 2010.

The digital version of the Speed Dealer Moms EP was released on the 06th of December and the 12″ vinyl was pressed several times until John was happy with the pressing. The release contains two tracks: march_three-3 as the side A and march_four as the side B. The cover art is minimalistic, featuring only the track names and musicians’ names in a typewriter font on a white background; and it was released through Funk’s Timesig label and distributed through Mike Paradinas’ acclaimed label, Planet µ.

Recent Mentions of the Band

In his 2012 blog post titled My Recent History, John stated that Speed Dealer Moms continue to be a band because it fits with his current dynamics.

In 2014 interviews conduced before Enclosure was released, he revealed that he had made over 50 hours of music with Funk and that he, Funk and McDonald would gather four times a year, spend two weeks together and do nothing but drink beer and record music.

In 2020, John co-founded a label named Evar Records with his partner Marcia Pinna and it was hinted that the label will be releasing some Speed Dealer Moms material in near future.

Links

Venetian Snares
The Alison Project
Bang Face
Planet µ
News items on SDM