steve blood

Another release that’s managed to worm its way to bypassing our defences is the debut platter from Steve Blood, well I say debut platter for Steve has been around the musical block for a while in the mid 90’s heading up the Woof imprint and as Wide Receiver riding the early wave of the big beat scene and then forging something of a lucrative career on the back of remix commissions. Here paired up with Andrew Lee they’ve known each other since their teens, Andrew having been in the early 90’s combo the Scarey Men. ‘the Last Xmas’ here in four variations is a bruised winter warming ballad tailored in introspection and classically measured and turned in a lost song craft vintage much reminiscent of a yuletide yearning that once upon a time cut its teeth upon the snow framed icing by a certain Greg Lake, a picturesque posy of pastoral flurries and a sweetly demurred Dickensian picture card framing. Same track but here re-housed as the ’tuscan leather vocal mix’ wherein its invested in oodles upon oodles of crunching trip hop beats all haloed in a quiet majesty. Elsewhere there’s the stripped to the bone spectral dance sophisticat that is the ’Armstrong factory mix though all said we suggest you seek out the ‘audiotrip space dub’ version which as it says on the tin is a trippy Orb-y styled celestial dubtronic groove machine sumptuously spaced out in twinkling chill toned down tempo motifs. http://www.thelastxmas.com