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Zed-U
Night Time on the Middle Passage
Babel BDV2982
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 comtemporary-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.
