Ben & Jason

Ben Parker, born in Surrey, England, and Jason Hazeley, born in Essex, England, cultivated a delicate acoustic style that prompted frequent associations with the legendary English singer-songwriter Nick Drake. The pair first crossed paths at a shared sheet music company, where their shared admiration for Drake’s work and shared aversion to the daily routine quickly fostered a connection, though several years passed before they started composing material as a unit. A complimentary session at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios yielded several recordings that secured them a deal with Go! Beat Records. Their eight-track mini-album Hello appeared to widespread praise at the start of 1999; its opening cut, ‘Joe’s Ark’, carried a string arrangement by Robert Kirby, the onetime Drake associate whom Hazeley and Parker had located after his long withdrawal from music in order to secure his involvement. Amid an active twelve months the duo also readied their first full-length release while taking on paid commissions to write for EastEnders actress turned pop singer Martine McCutcheon. Emoticons proved another striking set of finely wrought folk-pop numbers. The inherent quality of tracks such as ‘What I Meant To Say’ and ‘Air Guitar’ allowed the album to transcend the persistent Drake parallels, even as reviewers now detected echoes of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley as well. In September the two performed at The Tribute To Nick Drake concert held at London’s Barbican Centre.

Although widely admired by critics yet overlooked by buyers, Ben And Jason delivered a follow-up for Go! Beat that fell short of their earlier standard. After the label ended the relationship they chose to disband, and the album Goodbye eventually surfaced on Setanta Records.