Steven Jones + Logan Sky Drop A New Winter EP Today From The Sky For A Pensive Holiday Season

When it rains, it pours, and when it’s cold, it’s snow. Steven Jones + Logan Sky have been creating a catalog of synthetic music frosty in its mien but warmly rich in its analog instrumentation. Giving us those frissons of pleasure that only such contrasts may manifest. Today their new seasonal EP will examine the icy stuff that currently falls from above if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere with four songs picked for thematic coherence. The timing couldn’t have been better as we got our first flurries today in Western North Carolina.

Steven Jones + Logan Sky: Silver Rain – UK – DL [2023]

Silver Rain
The Ice Age [Glacial]
Christmas In The Machine [We Can Still Dream]
The Lord of Misrule

“Silver Rain” was a glistening track light on drum machine; setting the template for the EP as a whole. The warmth of the synths in the intro were the product of the obscure Suziki Waraku synth harp, as played by guest artiste, Jan Linton. With additional guitar and koto harmonics adding their mystery under his hand as well. Mr. Sky’s synths pulsated with spheric elegance throughout. Following an extended intro of great beauty, Steven Jones entered the song with a poised, contemplative vocal, with the drum machine only entering as counterpoint to the bass synths on the chorus. It gave the song an intimacy that belied its cinematic bearing for the best of both worlds in a song.

“The Ice Age [Glacial]” was strictly down to string synths and elegant if downbeat piano from Logan Sky. The melody absolutely haunted as Jones’ plaintive vocal was enhanced by precise dashes of reverb on the chorus. The whole track had a late period Roxy Music B-side vibe [think “Flesh + Blood” period…] and I cannot get enough of it! Jones + Sky have now joined the Classic B-side Club with this song. If not for scant synth atmospherics, this track could be just as effective as an “unplugged” track if we swapped out the string synth for an actual quartet…but you didn’t hear that from me!

Though it had already appeared on 2018’s “Electric Eye” album, it’s too appropriate for the song “Christmas In The Machine” to be enlisted once more here. The mellow 70s vibe with Fender Rhodes piano coupled with tubular bells pairs with “The Ice Age [Glacial]” like a hand in glove. The final song was another new one, with “The Lord Of Misrule” looking back to a now obscure medieval Christmas tradition of bacchanalian revelry; possibly carried over from the Roman Saturnalia festival of pre-Christian times. All very well and historical, but the song’s the thing, and this was the one beat-driven song in this EP, with almost a trip hop feel to it that reminded me of Associates excellent “Fever In the Shadows.” Mr. Jones employed his voiceover style here, dancing through the meter of the beats to attain a trancelike vibe than ended this EP on an intriguing, if unsettling note.

It’s a lovely soufflé from Steven Jones + Logan Sky, with Jan Linton once more providing excellent support to tide us over until the next full album from the duo. It’s yours in Bandcamp for a single Pound, but it’s worth upbuying since the EP functions as an antidote to all of the sappy holiday releases that assail our senses year in and year out. So DJ hit that button!