Biography
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Founded In
London, England, United Kingdom
London Brew is a British Jazz band, including Nubya Garcia, BBC Radio 1 presenter Benji B, and multiple members of Sons of Kemet and the Invisible.
The band was assembled by producer and guitarist Martin Terefe and executive producer Bruce Lampcov for a series of concerts in major cities across Europe, starting with one at the Barbican Centre celebrating the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In place of the concert, the group assembled at the Church Studios in North London in December 2020, starting five days after the end of the UK's second COVID-19 lockdown, to record the album, an improvised set inspired by Bitches Brew. The recording took place over three days. The process started with pre-production work by Terefe and the Invisible's Dave Okumu, which Okumu described as Terefe sharing "a vision rooted in inspiration and celebration rather than faithful recreation". Benji B was brought in to feed Terefe's and Okumu's initial sketches to the ensemble. Okumu said the recording process was full of "so many special moments" such as "Shabaka and Nubya speaking to each other through their horns or Theon Cross dropping the heaviest bass line this side of lockdown."
Terefe, left with over 12 hours of material from the sessions, said he mixed them "like a non-jazz record" with "no editing at all, except deciding where to start and end a song", a decision he considered "the least conventional thing to do". Terefe called the results a "new piece of music that taps into Miles's mindset at the time and our emotion of having been through the pandemic", and said "calling the album 'Inspired by Bitches Brew' comes the closest" to explaining it. The self-titled debut album was released on March 31, 2023.
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