James Hardway | en

Nom-de-plume of London-based multi-instrumentalist/producer David Harrow. Since 1996 Hardway has released nine albums of jazz-influenced drum & bass and breakbeats, the latest under the name James Hardway Collective. Harrow has also recorded as Technova.

It all started in the nineties, after a night of jungle music in darkest South London. David Harrow was back at the studio at 4 in the morning, dropping Charlie Parker over double timed hip-hop beats, discovering a brand new sound - thus James Hardway was born.

Hardway's first record "CoolJazzMotherfucker" was 'single of the week' in all of the European music papers, setting a precedent by which all jazz drum 'n bass (as the genre would become known) is now judged.

Never one to stay still, Hardway began a musical journey from those early albums, blazing a trail from 180 BPM breakneck jazz through to Cuban/Jamaican/Ragga hybrids to broken beat down-tempo funk.

Nine albums later, still cutting his own path, James Hardway Collective presents Over Easy, a genre-defying jazz funk excursion that echoes the punk-soul of James Blood Ulmer, evokes the spirit of Fela Kuti's epic jams, but is infused with the Cali bounce (no doubt a result of his Southern California relocation), and the sheen of today's R 'n B grind.

James Hardway Collective - comprised of some the finest musicians ever known. Legendary drummer Keith LeBlanc whose credits include the hip-hop beat of the Sugarhill Gang, No Sell Out (a hip-hop deconstruction of a Malcolm X speech) and Tackhead. Funky bass lines from Lunaticworks recording artist Greg Reeves aka Cordovan. Vocal duties are taken to higher levels by the tag-team known as Eyedentity who are the conscious chanteuse D Booker, the daughter of Brazillian jazz legends Flora Purim and Airto Moreira, with 'the flow' provided by her husband Krishna Booker, the son of jazz bassist Walter Booker and godson of Herbie Hancock. .