Night Time in the Middle Passage

Neil Charles- electric bass, mash up
Shabaka Hutchings- clarinet and tings
Tom Skinner- drums and sticks

"...a band that knows how to make punchy music without all the usual cliches"
The Guardian,June 2009

" Another London-based band with something new to say... this smashing, startling debut is a real ear-opener"
Jazz Journal, July 2009


One of the new generation of bands coming out of the London post-jazz scene, Zed-U made their awaited debut for Babel in the spring of 2009 titled Night Time on the Middle Passage . A feature on the band quickly followed in the current Jazzwise. But ZED-U have been making an impact with their heady live performances in 2008 at the London Jazz Festival and supporting Polar Bear at Ronnie Scotts. The trio's energetic, improvised-driven kind of ‘jazz-thrash' makes considerable use of electronic loops and effects and features electric bass from Neil Charles, saxophonist and clarinettist Shabaka Hutchings and key F-IRE collective member/drummer, Tom Skinner.

The Guardian jazz critic John Fordham chose Zed-U's new album for one of his picks of the week with the review as follows: "For anybody whose first acquaintance with sax/clarinet newcomer Shabaka Hutchings came via his imposing contribution to the Anglo-US Liberation Music Orchestra at Ornette Coleman's Meltdown last week, this trio recording - also featuring Neil Charles, formerly bassist with Empirical, and drummer Tom Skinner - might be surprising in its reserved impressionism and subtly textured reflection. Hutchings's skills as a fierce free-blaster were called upon at Meltdown, but here he plays more sparingly and wistfully, at times almost classically. The set confirms Zed-U as a group of real promise, from the folksy feel of The Forest through the initially smoky and then rougher feel of Roki. Hutchings pulls off an emotional Albert Ayler vibrato on Surman 1, and there's a stomping, thrashy feel suggestive of Acoustic Ladyland on Chief. This is a band that knows how to make punchy music without the usual cliches."

Garry Booth in Jazz Journal Magazine meanwhile told us to, "seek out Zed-U's experimentalists and they'll give you something to think about." See full review here