ZED-U
Night Time On the Middle Passage
BDV 2982

Tracklisting:

The Forest
Roki
Traveller
Showroom Dummies
Surman Part 1
Breaking the News
Chief
Phone Tap
Tikya USA
Surman Part 2
Detrekoys Decoy
Middle Passage

Shabaka Hutchings - clarinet, Temor saxophone
Neil Charles - Electric Bass, synth bass
Tom Skinner - Drums, keyboards, voice

"So exciting to hear young musicians who are prepared to branch out and explore a wide range of musical possibilities. I'm certain that Shabaka, Neil and Tom are musicians with a great future ahead of them." (John Surman)


" This is a band that knows how to make punchy music without the usual cliches."
(John Fordham, Guardian CD review)

"Seek out Zed-U's experimentalists and they'll give you something to think about."
(Garry Booth, Jazz Journal) review in full here


"Creating a music that incorporates electronics, improvisations and rhythms from reggae and beyond"
(Daniel Spicer, Jazzwise)

"This is music of acute intellectual rigour but also of deep spirit. Damn fine."
( Peter Bacon, Jazz Breakfast)


"Overall, this is a soulful, largely easy-on-the-ear collection that could appeal outside the jazz ghetto to fans of dubstep, dub, ambience and downtempo. "
(Bearded magazine website) review in full here

Night Time on the Middle Passage is the debut album from young three-piece band Zed-U . The band – original Empirical member, electric bassist Neil Charles , ex-Tomorrow's Warrior reedsman Shabaka Hutchings and F-IRE Collective lynchpin drummer Tom Skinner - have produced what Jazzwise calls “fresh and exciting” and have already gained a strong word-of-mouth reputation on the London scene, highlighted by a double bill with Mercury nominated Polar Bear at Ronnie scotts and Trouble Tune, their monthly residency at Hayward's Gallery's Concrete Bar on the South Bank curating and playing with such happening special guests as Finn Peters, Leafcutter John, guitarist Dave Okumu, Jason Yarde and Seb Rochford . Zed-U has also recently had a track from the CD played on Giles Peterson's Worldwide Show. The band's music - an energetic, improvisation-driven kind of 'jazz-thrash' mixes improv with electronica, and a dose of dub reggae, creating a unique, big sound, much greater than the sum of their parts would suggest.

The title Night Time on the Middle Passage refers to the intercontinental strip of sea between Africa and the West; depicting transition, the fusion of cultures and ways of life – all integral to the band's creative processes. Their interest in merging cultures, the development of the urban landscape and the need for self-expression have all influenced the music and also their approach to making music. They have been described as a band in flux, which goes some way towards describing their method of constantly reworking their material, of perfecting tunes in terms of how they were originally conceived, written and arranged, only to constantly reinvent them. This approach lends a freshness to the music and the album itself becomes a snapshot of a certain time and place in the band's history, most likely never to be repeated.

Influential ECM international recording artist/reedsman John Surman is also very much a part of Night Time on the Middle Passage . His suggestions in various discussions and workshops prior to recording the album were taken on board throughout the writing, recording and mixing process. By taking the raw elements of jazz and incorporating generous use of electronic loops and effects, Zed-U creates what they call a ‘symphony of sound'. Each instrument effectively doubles up their contribution by adding electronic effects, to create a much larger sound. They successfully dissect numerous styles and genres to meet their own ends and one of the most distinctive sounds to come out of this has been dub reggae, largely credited to drummer Tom Skinner. It can be heard lurking in several tracks, most notably on Phone Tap , but also in Showroom Dummies , a cover of the Kraftwerk classic which works extraordinary well in this setting. Lalo Schifrin fans will spot a cheeky Lalo riff towards the end of Breaking the News whilst hardcore jazz-thrashers will be turning the volume level up for Chief, which features some awesome tenor sax playing from Shabaka Hutchings over Neil Charles' driving bass line.

Album Launch 11th June: London - Vortex Jazz Club, Gillett Street , Dalston  N16

Although the music produced by Zed-U (saxophonist/clarinettist Shabaka Hutchings, bassist Neil Charles and drummer Trom Skinner) will undoubtedly be classified as 'jazz', courtesy of its instrumentation and reliance on improvisation, it also draws heavily on a number of other genres, ranging from freely improvised and electronic music to dub reggae; one of the album's standout tracks (Kraftwerk's 'Showroom Dummies', the only non-original) even stirs dub effects into an intriguing mix of jazz and minimalist art-rock.

In addition to operating within the conventional jazz-trio format (saxophone blazing away over tightly meshed rhythm section), Zed-U can transform themselves, with judicious use of electronic loops and effects, into a thoroughly contemporary-sounding unit, resembling, by turns, a jazz-thrash band along the lines of, say, Led Bib; a free-jazz trio; or the aforementioned dub band, complete with echoing drums and hypnotic basslines.

Overall, though, the album coheres mainly because it is so clearly a product of the London scene, in which all the above styles jostle and rub off on each other – as an indication of the richness and vitality of the capital's current music scene, Night Time on the Middle Passage is hard to beat.

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