Bradley Zero

“It could be seen as a brave move,” ponders Bradley Zero, as he thumbs through his vast record collection, transplanted from his front room to form the centrepiece of his brand new Peckham bar and restaurant Jumbi. “But where better to have them than here? Where they’re being played and appreciated, rather than at home where loads of them are going unlistened to.”

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in August and Zero’s enjoying a midweek gap in his busy schedule which has seen him play everywhere from Peckham’s Gala Festival and his own Rhythm Section nights at fabric and Colour Factory this summer, to Circoloco in Ibiza and Kala in Albania.

And on top of a busy international DJ schedule, he’s found time (just about) to open his own listening bar and restaurant in Peckham, the South-East London neighbourhood he’s called home and been a key creative player in for over a decade.

“We had a month from getting the lease on this place to opening the doors,” he says. “My dad came down from Huddersfield to help us set it all up and slept in a sleeping bag on that sofa in the corner for three days. Fair play to him, that’s putting a shift in isn’t it?”

Jumbi may have come together quickly but the idea to open somewhere like this has been permeating in the 34-year-old DJ’s mind for a while. Working in bars since his mid-teens, (first in his native Leeds and later in London) Zero has always loved the environment and mix of people a good watering hole can create. On his travels as a DJ and record digger, he’s discovered a fair few establishments that combine his love of music, community and seriously good sound to great effect.

“I’m not the first person to put a record collection in a bar and I’ve taken bits from all of those places but hopefully it’s got my own stamp on it. It’s funny because a friend of mine came by recently and said: ‘Bradley, you’ve just recreated your front room in a bar!’”

Aside from his vast record collection, the Jumbi one-deck set-up features a custom Technics 1210 from Isonoe in London, vintage Rogers and Tanoy speakers, (purchased in an auction at the BBC Wales studios in Cardiff and borrowed from fellow NTS resident Ruf Dug), a d&b subwoofer, an E&S DJR 400 Rotary Mixer and a Roland RE-201 ‘Space Echo’ effects unit, a piece of equipment used on countless dub reggae records and used in Jumbi to fill the silence during record swaps on the one deck.

“It’s still a work in progress,” he says. “But I feel like we’ve created a really nice, pressure-free, environment to play music in. The record collection’s kind of like an altar and the fact that you’re not facing out to a crowd or

Photos: Rob Jones

elevated when playing is a really important part of it.”

Over the last decade, he’s been creating his own musical ecosystem which began with the Rhythm Section radio show (first on City Radio in Peckham from 2009 and on NTS since 2012), grew to include the Rhythm Section parties a few years later before morphing into a record label in 2014. Housed in Canavan’s Pool Club in Peckham, the Rhythm Section parties were the first thing to bring Zero and his crew to wider attention, winning the hearts of London clubbers for its stripped back and unpretentious approach to nightlife and providing a focal point for a growing dance music scene in Peckham.

“I came to London to study Fine Art at UCL originally,” he explains. “And felt immediately at home in Peckham when I moved here. There were all these exhibitions going on and the odd squat party or day rave, but I wanted to start something that happened on the regular and served the community. It was £3 entry before midnight, happened twice a month and was usually me plus one other DJ, and nine times out of ten, you hadn’t heard of them.”

While the parties in the pool hall were never about the big names, they did give a leg-up to everyone from Jayda G and Shanti Celeste to Chaos in the CBD who all stopped by to play shows relatively early in their career (“I call it the ‘golden era’ now,” he laughs. “Everything was so simple.”) and also

segued nicely into the Rhythm Section International label and Zero’s own career as an in-demand DJ.

The first release on Rhythm Section International came in 2014 with Al Dobson Jr.’s aptly titled ‘Rye Lane Vol.1’ and since then the label has been home to records by everyone from Session Victim and Jordan Rakei in his Dan Kye guise, introduced us to south London MC Pinty and the low-key and jazz-inflected house of New Zealand sibling duo Chaos in the CBD whose track ‘Midnight in Peckham’ became something of a late-night anthem.

“That Al Dobson Jr. record was the perfect way to start the label,” says Zero. “Because it had a bit of everything that was to come in it. There was that downtempo hip hop vibe to it, a touch of that Detroit sound and a lot of organic percussion and jazzy samples. It was dancey but super low-slung and meditative too.”

His musical palette and trifecta of record label, radio presenting and DJing has earned him comparisons with Gilles Peterson, and like Peterson his easy going nature is coupled with a steely focus and drive.

“I did an MBA (Master of Business Administration) during the pandemic,” he explains. “Because the higher up I go, whether that be into a record label office or a big company, I find not many people look like me. I want to make sure I know when I’m being bullshitted or taken advantage of.”

The influence of his Dominican roots is one of the threads that runs right through Jumbi (the name is Dominican creole or patois describing a mischievous spirit that likes rum and causes mayhem and disruption) and his next project, alongside Jumbi co-founder Nathanael Williams, is to start a rum brand to go alongside the Caribbean-themed food and strong influence the venue takes from Caribbean culinary and soundsystem culture.

“Rum’s got a really complicated history, linked to slavery and colonialism,” he says. “And recently we’ve noticed a lot of small boutique rum brands popping up and presenting this Afro-Caribbean identity, but invariably they end up being owned by white people pretending to be Black. We felt there’s people trying to cash-in on an Afro-Caribbean identity and found that disconcerting, but rather than just complain, we thought we should offer an alternative.”

We’ll drink to that. SEAN GRIFFITHS