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Shabaka Hutchings - clarinet, Temor saxophone
Neil Charles - Electric Bass, synth bass
Tom Skinner - Drums, keyboards, voice
"Creating a music that incorporates electronics, improvisations and rhythms from reggae and beyond" - Jazzwise
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.
LINKS
http://www.myspace.com/zumusik
http://www.myspace.com/shabakahutchings
http://www.myspace.com/bassicallyneils
