On the night of 15th June 2018, three friends, Dave Okumu, Tom Herbert and Tom Skinner came together to perform a selection of deconstructed compositions in an improvisatory format at The Crypt in Camberwell, south-east London. Their shared history as musicians stretches back to their formative teenage years when they would congregate to learn how to play the music which had impacted so heavily on their lives, resulting in a distillation of funk, soul, pop, metal, classical, punk, hip hop, dance, folk, electronic and world music, filtered through the prism of the endlessly resourceful, inventive and expressive language of jazz. Their individual and collective journeys have woven them into the fabric of contemporary music through their work with artists as diverse as Adele, Grace Jones, Anna Calvi, Amy Winehouse, Sons Of Kemet, Kano, Lianne La Havas, Zero 7, Ed O’Brien, Jack De Johnette, Jessie Ware, Yoko Ono and Polar Bear. Their personal visions have come to fruition via their own projects, namely Okumu and Herbert’s Mercury-nominated The Invisible and Skinner’s solo outing as Hello Skinny. Somehow, that informal night in Camberwell would represent the closing of a circle and the beginning of a new chapter for these three musicians.
