David Harrow has been many things in his career. Under a multiplicity of monikers he's remixed Depeche Mode ("Enjoy the Silence") and the Orb ("Asylum"), and worked with Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound System, Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart, and Psychic TV. Harrow's most lucrative credit, though, is for writing Billie Ray Martin's Euro dance monster, "Your Loving Arms." He even explored ethno-techno as Technova and laptop jungle as Magnetic for releases on Andrew Weatherall's Emissions Audio Output label. But James Hardway is Dave Harrow's hardest working alias. Straight from the Fridge is Harrow's fifth full-length excursion as James Hardway, and it incorporates many of the Afro-Cubanisms that dominated his previous album, Moors and Christians, into the jazzy drum-n-bass of earlier outings.
Straight from the Fridge launches into the St. Germain-style dancefloor jazz of "Happiness Brakes." To a bucking accompaniment of grimy Hammond B-3 organ stabs, Invader of the Heart Clive Bell sends flute curlicues flitting above and in between scurrying muted horns. The track is so deftly syncopated that its 4/4 kick drum stomp is almost superfluous. For "Earth Runnings," Harrow sets up spacy synths that lurk in the background and wisp past vocalist J.B. Bell's sultry, spoken-word vocals.
"Andrea's Chimes" is a gorgeous piano doodle that segues into the world-weary voice of Floyd Batts and his "Danger Blue" lament. Here, Hardway has sampled Batts' song (originally recorded in 1959 at the Parchman Mississippi State Penitentiary) and surrounded it with xylophone lines and burdensome shackles of piano chords. Fortunately, the song avoids the oafishness that usually accompanies disco-fied blues hollers. Hardway's setting is so complimentary and seamless that if I didn't know Batts' vocal was an incorporated recording, I could not have guessed.
Ghetto Priest makes a couple of appearances here, too, ripping loose some fiery dancehall chat over the kind of fierce acoustic bass that should by now be familiar to longtime Hardway albums. Priest gets nuff respect from me by referencing both Admiral Bailey's Casiotone raga classic "Jump Up" and Death in Vegas's digital rudie "Jump and Twist" throughout "Jump Up Natural." He also proves himself more than just a rasping raggamuffin during the consciousness ballad "Speak Softly," on which he gives up a fine Bim Sherman impression.
"Can't Slow Down" approaches cosmic-jazz territory with a reed-thin swooping synthline zipping through a percussive barrage. With a solo trumpet blast similar to the one heard in Sinéad O'Connor's "Fire on Babylon," the middle-eastern tonalities of the unfittingly named "Uptown" is an immediate link to Moors and Christians. With its Hammond organ filling in spaces between sirocco-surfing horns and a skittering piano figure, the song recalls jazz-folkster Glen Moore's bass-heavy growler, "Moot."
As Hardway records go, Straight from the Fridge is succinct and infectiously strong. Unlike previous outings, this record rents no space to noodly weaklings such as "Our Cousin Frank" (from A Positive Sweat). I'm already thirsty for another frosty cool one from Hardway's icebox.
