Biography
Aaron Funk, the Canadian producer behind Venetian Snares and its intricate IDM and breakcore catalog, has channeled his affinity for acid, electro, and new wave through the separate Last Step project. In contrast to the majority of his Snares output, Last Step material seldom incorporates samples or breakbeats and instead emphasizes tones generated by analog synthesizers. The project’s tempos and time signatures tend toward greater restraint than is customary for Snares releases, though passages of considerable intensity still surface. Last Step first surfaced without attribution in 2005 via the Planet Mu EP You’re a Nice Girl, then issued the digital EP Bhavani through Project 168 the following year. The track “Lives with Angel” appeared prominently on Planet Mu’s 2006 double-disc compilation Sacred Symbols of Mu. The self-titled Last Step album arrived on the same label in 2007 and collected every cut from You’re a Nice Girl together with “Lives with Angel.” Only after the album’s appearance did the identity of its creator become public. The project’s next long-player, the luminous and buoyant 1961, arrived in 2008 and featured drumming by Balázs Pándi, credited as Mustache. Funk revived the alias in 2012 with the mini-album Sleep, whose pieces he stated were captured while he drifted off. Though markedly slower and sparser than most of his other work, the recording retained a luminous, buoyant character despite its drowsy demeanor. A follow-up, Lost Sleep, was issued by Funk himself as a digital EP on March 3, 2015—a date chosen to honor the Roland TB-303 Bass Line synthesizer’s pivotal role in acid house.
Albums
