One thing that might surprise you then is it’s being made by jazz musicians. It’s true that the bands, currently making inroads into young audiences and scenes outside the usual confines of the straight jazz ghetto, have been labelled as jazz-punk, skronk, or post-jazz even. In common, they use band names that evoke the zeal of punk and thrash: Fraud and Led Bib are the pair at the head of the pack of this fresh musical explosion. Both are releasing new albums for the Babel Label, which we are proud to think of as a standard bearer for London independent jazz, releasing the likes of the 2005 Mercury nominated Polar Bear CD Held on the Tips of Fingers, Acoustic Ladyland’s popular Last Chance Disco and the agit-entertainment oeuvre of the iconoclastic Billy Jenkins. “We don’t want people to sit in the audience and scratch their beards,” says Mark Holub, drummer with Led Bib. “We want them to enjoy it.”

The new gangs on the mean streets of Hackney you’ll find are jazz musicians.

These are musicians who play the music that they have grown up with: electronic, indie thrash, punk, new wave and post rock are a major part of their aesthetic. Even though they are happy to be branded as “jazz”, don’t be surprised to see a version of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ on Led Bib’s album Sizewell Tea or tunes entitled ‘Iggy’ and ‘Nico’ recorded by Acoustic Ladyland . The Babel Label is a record label that has organically evolved out of the scene, interacting with musicians as they themselves have been developing. Over the past ten years it has evolved enduring relationships with Billy Jenkins, pianist Huw Warren and vocalist Christine Tobin for example. Following on from Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland, the ‘live’ factor is fundamental to the impact these bands are having. Fraud’s incendiary live performances have won many plaudits. Meanwhile Led Bib made no. 16 in the “acts not to be missed this Summer” in the recent Observer Music Monthly , ahead of stellar names such as the Arctic Monkeys and Björk, and in the same paper was hailed as a new force in contemporary indie music — regardless of genre — by influential journalist Paul Morley.

The emergence of a new jazz generation in more rundown areas of places such as Hackney and Bethnal Green continues unabated over recent years and is part of a larger migration of young people (affecting students and cash strapped musicians alike) to East London following on from the squeeze on rented accommodation by developers keen to gentrify, in their eyes, the ‘trendier’ parts of London. The jazz musicians have moved into these areas. The new gangs on the mean streets of Hackney you’ll find are jazz musicians.

The Vortex has taken the mantle and is encouraging a diverse audience unfettered by chart and pop fashionistas and obsessions with celebrity. Lily Allen and Damon Albarn have been left behind in Camden.

Every new movement needs a physical as well as spiritual home. The Vortex jazz club is at the centre of the action. The Vortex is now based in Dalston, having been forced out of its original home in Stoke Newington. It’s playing a vital role in giving a platform to the bands, at the same time capturing the vitality of the area. Dalston is a transient melting pot of cultures, an environment in which the most innovative and earthy jazz is thriving. Situated in Gillett Square in which you’ll find a Nigerian hairdresser next to a Somalian qat seller, while up the road you can eat your meze with Gilbert and George or see the latest art house film at the Rio.

The Vortex has taken the mantle and is encouraging a diverse audience unfettered by chart and pop fashionistas and obsessions with celebrity. Lily Allen and Damon Albarn have been left behind in Camden. The vibe inside the Vortex is boho, energetic and as far removed from the “niiiice” Jazz Club of The Fast Show as possible. It’s also a laboratory that allows musicians the opportunity to lead the way and meet the challenges of their culture and environment through their music without having to conform to audience trends. Other venues around the area are following in its footsteps such as the nearby Passing Clouds, but there are inevitably casualties of the success in the East, victims to the soul-destroying interests of developers, one recently being the Spitz which has a closure notice nailed to its door.

It’s also of course because you can survive here with less money, an essential for jazz musicians with a streetwise attitude ready for an open exchange with elements of the non-jazz scene.

The Vortex had set up originally in the late 1980s in nearby Stoke Newington when the area was also home to the site of the original Jazz Café (before it lost something of the risk-taking energy when it moved to its present plusher premises in Camden). The arrival of a jazz community based around the old Vortex in Stoke Newington meant an influx of a younger generation infused with the spirit of risk taking, the fundamental revolutionary aspect of jazz running from Jelly Roll Morton to John Coltrane. Django Bates, Christine Tobin, Phil Robson and Tom Arthurs joined the likes of improvised music god Derek Bailey already established in the area.

The move to Dalston was a natural evolution. It’s also of course because you can survive here with less money, an essential for jazz musicians with a streetwise attitude ready for an open exchange with elements of the non-jazz scene. All owe much to the New York downtown scene and electric experiments of Miles Davis, but jazz isn’t the only influence on Babel’s artists. Finn Peters’ Su-Ling is named after a gamelan flute, laptop wizard Leafcutter John is an integral part of Polar Bear, Fraud marry thrash metal riffs to menacingly abstract post-rock electronica and free improv, and Tom Arthurs’ albums include reworkings of Messaien and Brahms, while Christine Tobin even has a MySpace tribute page to Leonard Cohen. Welsh hymns, John Dowland, Youssou N’Dour, the Carpenters: the list goes on and absolutely nothing is off limits.

—Oliver Weindling is founder and director of the Babel Label, and a director of the Vortex.—
—Selwyn Harris is online editor for Babel and a regular major contributor to Jazzwise magazine—

Photo is of Led Bib