hard.times is an instrumental jazz/funk/experimental band from Nanaimo BC. Our members have been playing music professionally in Nanaimo and Victoria for many years (The Body Politic, Dope Soda, Decadence, The Capital Collective, Lovecoast, David Gogo, The New Souls, and many more). hard.times played at Victoria Jazzfest in 2019 in Centennial Square.

 

The group’s sound is almost exclusively based in quintuplet swing: a feel that is most often electronically-generated. While a lot of music in the experimental-jazz-fusion genre can alienate audiences with free-time or atonal harmony, hard.times’ goal is to create music that is pleasing to the ear; improvisational, rhythmically and compositionally complex, and experimental, but presented with familiar chords and a tight groove that the listener can understand and enjoy.