JIM

Over the last 25 years, Jim Baron has established himself as a singular contributor to the British musical landscape. Most famously as a founding member of beloved disco and house outfit Crazy P, while under his longstanding DJ alias Ron Basejam he is regarded as one of underground house’s finest practitioners. Recording as JIM, Baron revealed a previously hidden side of his talents and also a completely different voice, mood and music to what we were used to hearing from him. A style influenced by the likes of Jackson C Frank, Terry Callier, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and soulful West Coast sounds like Ned Doheny. JIM’s warmly received 2023 debut LP Love Makes Magic, an album that began as a pandemic-era studio experiment and became something of a sleeper hit, appearing in many an end-of-year chart. Labelled variously as Balearic, folktronica, blue-eyed soul and Laurel Canyon, Love Makes Magic was perhaps all and none of those things: a record rooted less in Californian mythology than in Baron’s own musical world, somewhere between Sherwood, Nottingham, classic songwriting, electronic soul and the no-nonsense good times that have long run through his work. One thing was indisputable - it connected with people... and still does.