After moving to London and starting to gig in 2006, James Edge formed James Edge and the Mindstep to record 2010 debut album ‘In The Hills, The Cities’. The working relationships he built around this time would provide him with some dependable collaborators, including regular engineer and occasional co-producer Tom Aitkenhead. A highlight of these sessions was working with string arranger Robert Kirby (Nick Drake, Paul Weller, The Magic Numbers) on the song 'Becoming'.
From touring the debut album, a core jazz-folk trio of Edge, double bassist Andy Waterworth and drummer Avvon Chambers materialised. The songs that would form second album, 'Machines He Made' coalesced around this line up, James writing songs and complex pieces of music geared specifically to the ensemble, playing to the musicians' strengths and allowing the players space to improvise and put their stamp on the music.
With seven songs finished, the trio started recording ‘Machines He Made’ in 2014. Over a five day period, the trio was tracked live and only the backing vocals overdubbed. With half the album not even fully written at the start of the sessions, the songs were largely unrehearsed, band members and additional session players mostly having not heard the pieces before. The aim was capture something raw, imperfect, exciting and honest.
2016 saw the new music starting to trickle out and the praise surrounding the band get more fervent. A collaboration with excellent independent label Folkstock Records resulted in a double a-side single and compilation EP - ‘Where We’re Going To’ was played by Alex Lester on Radio 2 and Tom Robinson on 6Music, while ‘Becoming’, the flipside on that AA single release, was premiered and made song of the day on Folk Radio UK. The ‘On A Red Horse’ EP, a compilation of songs from both albums curated by Folkstock, also received glowing reviews from R2 and Fresh On The Net amongst others. The title tracks's demented video, conceived by James and produced by cult animator Ross Butter, gained quite a following and provided the band with another wave of exposure.
Second album ‘Machines He Made’ was finally released in December 2016 to a mixture of critical acclaim and mild bafflement. Complicated and uncompromising, songs from the album have nonetheless found their way onto over 40 radio stations internationally including NRK P1 in Norway, with the songs Four Two Four and Widdershins, which Tom Robinson called "extraordinary", receiving airplay on BBC 6Music.
Two new songs, Softbone and Worn will be released on 1st December 2017, preceded by a limited edition 7".