Transglobal Underground

Event Has Passed

Last Show: Friday 15 th July 2022

PizzaExpress Live (Birmingham)

There are few acts in the UK with as strong an influence, as complex a legacy, and as mysteriously legendary as Transglobal Underground. The band return to PizzaExpress for an exclusive Birmingham performance as part of a UK tour to promote their latest CD ‘Walls Have Ears’. "With swaggering reggae beats to modern Maghrebi, the near-original line-up reunites for a new studio album. The musical collisions are as glorious as ever. The album is a classic TGU mix of soul, rap, electronica and bliss."

Trying to describe what it is and what it was has defeated the most eloquent of journalists, and those involved in TGU itself have made no effort to help, refusing to define themselves on the grounds that it wasn’t their job to do so, while rejecting any signs anyone attempted to hang on them.

So what is Transglobal Underground? Well, over 25 years it’s been DJ/musical collective, one of the founders of global fusion, a working band famous for it’s scorching live shows, a techno soundsystem, a folk festival rabble rouser, a pop group, a club night, a Middle Eastern hit production team, an improvised study group for Indian classical music, an Albanian brass band, a duo..or was it an octet?...a seminar, a medicine show and several things no one involved would admit to if they could even remember them.

It all started with a bunch of disgruntled musicians, singers, DJ, writers and sampler geeks hanging round the cramped offices of West London label Nation Records. Primitive computers were stretched to their full possibilities, beaten up analogue synths kept working by screwdrivers and willpower, mashed up cassettes and turntables serviced a  heady concoction of  club grooves, dub, bhangra, rock, digital hardcore and oriental melody, relying on inspiration and a massive belief in the need to create something new.

The main line that goes through the history of Transglobal Underground was defined at the beginning and continues onward. Onstage it’s a joyful and unpredictable journey into the bottomless vaults of the Transglobal catalogue, whether featuring members of the original lineup, or more recent and diverse additions to the TGU family. Over the years Transglobal Underground has developed a life of its own and goes where it will for its own reasons. Everyone else simply follows.

 

Band Line Up

Hamid Mantu (drums)

Tuup (vocals/percussion)

Sheema Mukherjee (sitar/bass guitar)

Tim Whelan (keyboards)

Rav Neiyyar (Dohl drum/percussion)