Ninja Tune
Ninja Tune is an independent record label based in London, with a satellite office in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1990 by musicians Matt Black and Jonathan More, known collectively as Coldcut. The label was established as an outlet for Coldcut to explore a style distinct from that of the mainstream music industry.
History
1990–1999
Following a Coldcut tour in Japan with Norman Cook the label lifted its moniker and aesthetic from the Japanese TV shows of the 1950s and 1960s based on the Ninja. With their first releases in the early 1990s, Ninja Tune went on to "usher in trip-hop/instrumental hip hop." according to Pitchfork.After Coldcut's success with their first label, Ahead of Our Time, contractual issues prevented them from releasing anything under their name. Ninja Tune's inaugural release was Coldcut's house break collection Zen Brakes Vol. 1 in 1990. The label's profile increased when Coldcut, as DJ Food, released their funky hip-hop jazz-breaks album, Jazz Brakes Vol. 1, which "blew up" in the DJ circuit, according to Record Collector. DJ Food's Jazz Brakes series were intended as source material for DJs and producers who worked with breaks and beats.
In 1992, Peter Quicke joined as label manager, as did Patrick Carpenter, a.k.a. PC, who joined Coldcut as a sound engineer. Steinski, a big inspiration behind Coldcut's initial forays into music, released his first Ninja Tune EP as Steinski and Mass Media in the same year. According to Nate Patrin, the single "builds on a catchy loop of the Jackson 5's 'It's Great to Be Here' and creates one of the few anti-Gulf War protest songs of the era, transforming Bush's speech into a pop hook and interspersing quotes from Jello Biafra and Mario Savio's famous 1964 address to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement."
Between 1994 and 1997, Ninja explored the instrumental hip hop beats sound. Its pioneering influence on the genre became more prevalent with the label's first compilation, Funkjazztical Tricknology, in 1995. The genre originated in England as a successor to acid house, taking influence from acid jazz and funk, and using hip hop style breakbeats rather than the mechanical '4 on the floor' drum rhythm of the house.
The ongoing success of Solid Steel, and its subsequent syndication across the globe, broadcast the Ninja brand across the airwaves. The late-night Saturday show cut all manner of beats, samples, and loops into a chaotic musical blend. The show's 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach continued through Coldcut's "utterly brilliant" Journeys by DJ series of mix compilations in 1995. The title 70 Minutes of Madness was a nod to Coldcut's earlier Eric B & Rakim remix, and included sounds from Depth Charge, DJ Food, Plastikman, Mantronix, Harold Budd and the Doctor Who theme.
In 1994, Matt Black's close friend Mixmaster Morris introduced Matt to Openmind – a DJ & design collective in Camberwell – at the Telepathic Fish chill-out club they were running. Openmind included Kevin Foakes a.k.a. Strictly Kev of DJ Food. After submitting a re-styled company logo he was employed by Ninja Tune in the capacity of overall design consultant. Matt Black also invited Foakes to Ninja's recording studio, where he eventually joined the many hands at work on DJ Food's 1995 album, Recipe for Disaster.
With their two 1994 albums, Paradise Blown and Electric Lazyland, 9 Lazy 9 helped spawn the funky, subterranean sound for which Ninja Tune would earn its early acclaim, combining hip hop and funk breakbeats with jazz-influenced sound.
Coldcut's "Timber" video – an AV collage piece using analogous techniques to audio sample collage – was put on heavy rotation on MTV, and won awards for its innovative use of repetitive video clips synced to the music, including being shortlisted at the Edinburgh Television and Film Festival in their top five music videos of the year in 1998.
In 1995, Matt Black created Pipe, Ninja's first website. The label's current website, ninja tune.net, was developed by the following year.
Also in 1996, Ninja Tune expanded across the ocean, opening its Montreal office to manage distribution across North America.he book Integrated Performance Management described Ninja Tunes as devising "a term that perfectly expresses the antitheses between chaos and order."
n 1997 Ninja Tune's sister label Big Dada was launched. Coldcut's fourth album Let Us Play! was released in September 1997, making its way to the Top 40, reaching No. 33 in the UK Charts. Let Us Play! paid homage to the greats that inspired them. Their first album to be released on Ninja Tune, it featured guest appearances by Grandmaster Flash, Steinski, Jello Biafra, Jimpster, The Herbaliser, Talvin Singh, Daniel Pemberton and Selena Saliva. Hex collaborated with Coldcut to produce the multimedia CD-ROM for the album. Hex later evolved the software into the engine that was used on the Let Us Play! world tour.
In 1999, Let Us Replay! was released, a double-disc remix album where Coldcut's classic tunes were remixed by Cornelius, Irresistible Force, Shut Up and Dance, Carl Craig and J Swinscoe. Spin Magazine stated that Let Us Replay! pieces together "short sharp shocks that put the mental in 'experimental' and still bring the breaks till the breakadawn." It also includes a few live tracks from the duo's innovative world tour. The CD-ROM of the album, which also contained a free demo disc of the VJamm software, was one of the earliest audiovisual CD- Roms on the market, and Muzik claimed deserved to "have them canonized...it's like buying an entire mini studio for under $15."
Mr. Scruff's Keep It Unreal was released in the summer of 1999. Filled with bubbly breakbeats, slick horn sizzles, and bristling house beats, the album opened with BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Ann Hobbes asking, "Are you ready Mr. Scruff?"
At some point in 1999, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission decided that DJ Vadim and Sarah Jones' pro-women empowerment record Your Revolution was "indecent" for radio. The decision ended up in court in 2002, where arguments were advanced for freedom of speech, freedom of expression and to argue the double standards of the ban and fine.
2000–2010
In 2000, Ninja Tune celebrated its first decade of music with Xen Cuts, a three CD, 6 x LP box set that provided a collection of their artists. Mark Richardson with Pitchfork called the effort a "mostly downtempo affair." It featured the likes of Latyrx, The Herbaliser, Kid Koala and Luke Vibert, Clifford Gilberto, Amon Tobin and Funki Porcini.Also in 2000, Kid Koala released Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, "a playfully arranged montage of quirky sound bites, rhythmic scratching, and fluid hip hop beats." Deriving sample material from both comedy albums and sound effects records, and jazz and funk vinyl, the release received much critical success. It was called "brilliant" and "humorous" in the book Minority Report: An Alternative History of English-language Arts in Quebec. Kid Koala cut two further highly acclaimed albums for Ninja, 2003's Some of My Best Friends Are DJs and 2006's Your Mom's Favorite DJ.
In 2001, Roots Manuva delivered his second album, Run Come Save Me, which was deemed one of the albums of the year by The Independent. Similarly, Mojo described it as "not just a landmark UK hip hop album, but a landmark hip hop album period". The album charted at number 33 in the UK Charts. "Witness ", the first single off the album, charted at No. 45 and was declared by AllMusic as being "the best British rap single since Tricky's 'Aftermath'." Run Come Save Me won a nomination for the 2002 Mercury Music Award, and was called by The Times "Too maverick, too brilliantly original a talent to be tethered by mere genre or geography."
Also in 2001 Cornwall's Luke Vibert joined Ninja Tune. Growing up amongst contemporaries Aphex Twin and Tom Middleton/Global Communication, Vibert had made a name for himself in experimental electronica, though his name has always been hard to pin down: he operates under several different aliases. With the moniker Wagon Christ, Vibert released Musipal on Ninja, which NME called "an intriguing procession of cheeky collages."
Mr. Scruff's second album on Ninja Tune, Trouser Jazz, was released on 9 September 2002. It charted at 29 on the UK Chart.
In 2003, Simon Green, a.k.a. Bonobo, released his first proper Ninja album, Dial 'M' for Monkey, a subliminally seductive collection of atmospheric instrumentals. A live version of Bonobo soon took to the road, which seeped into the production of 2006's Days to Come, an album that blurs the line between a programmed and live sound and created "a daydream vibe embedded within its moodiness."
Blurring lines further, Coldcut collaborated with American video mashup artist TV Sheriff in 2004 to produce their cut-up entitled Revolution USA. The tactical-media project followed on from the UK version and extended the premise "into an open access participatory project," according to author Graham Meikle. Through the multimedia political art project, over 12 gigabytes of footage from the last 40 years of US politics were made accessible to download, allowing participants to create a cut-up over a Coldcut beat. Coldcut also collaborated with TV Sheriff and NomIg to produce two audiovisual pieces "World of Evil" and "Revolution '08", both composed of footage from the United States presidential elections of respective years. The music used was composed by Coldcut, with "Revolution '08" featuring a remix by The Qemists.
Roots Manuva climbed back into the limelight at the beginning of 2005, with his deft album Awfully Deep. His third album, which reached number 24 in the UK Charts, was celebrated by critics for his growth as an artist, with NME calling it "a set of immense maturity that never rubs your nose in its thematic complexity, compositional innovation, and thunderous thump-beats."
The Cinematic Orchestra scored a new soundtrack, Man with a Movie Camera, for a screening of the visionary 1929 Russian silent feature, Man with a Movie Camera, for the 2000 Portuguese Film Festival Fantasporto. The following year it was performed at the opening gala of Portugal's year as European Capital of Culture in Porto in front of 3000 people. The material written for this film score laid the groundwork for what would be The Cinematic Orchestra's second full-length, Every Day, released in May 2002, and one of Ninja's best-selling albums. Roots Manuva featured on the track "All Things to All Men", which later soundtracked the final scenes of the 2006 movie Kidulthood. The Cinematic Orchestra's albums grew increasingly ambitious over the years, with 2007's Ma Fleur album marking a move away from beats, and embracing folk influences. The album was based on the work of photographer Maya Hayuk, and conceived by Swinscoe as the premise for the score of an imaginary film. Album track "To Build a Home" became one of Ninja's top tracks of all time, and track "TBAH" features vocals from Patrick Watson, which became the band's most successful song.
Following Jason Swinscoe's vocal appreciation of Jaga Jazzist's 2001 album A Livingroom Hush, the Norwegian jazz band signed to Ninja Tune to re-release A Livingroom Hush in 2002, followed by The Stix later that year, and their fourth album What We Must in 2005.
Coldcut returned with the single "Everything Is Under Control" at the end of 2005, featuring Jon Spencer and Mike Ladd. It was followed in 2006 by their fifth studio album Sound Mirrors, which was quoted as being "one of the most vital and imaginative records Jon More and Matt Black have ever made", and saw the duo "continue, impressively, to find new ways to present political statements through a gamut of pristine electronics and breakbeats." The fascinating array of guest vocalists included Soweto Kinch, Annette Peacock, Amiri Baraka, and Saul Williams.
Ninja connected with L.A. filmmaker and photographer B+, who had filmed Keepintime: Talking Drums Whispering Vinyl, a short movie documenting a meeting between jazz/funk drummers Paul Humphrey and James Gadson, and a bunch of turntablists who now scratched and sampled their breakbeats, including DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist and the Beat Junkies. This project snowballed into a live concert featuring the drum duo jamming along with the turntablists – and included extra guests Madlib and DJ Numark. In 2005, Ninja released Keep in Time: A Live Recording, a CD/DVD package that included remixes from King Britt, Oh No, J Rocc, and AmmonContact.
Back in London, having previously scored a place with his college band E.V.A. on the 1996 Ninja 12" One Track Mind, Fin Greenall subsequently signed to the label as a solo artist, under the name Fink. First releasing Fresh Produce – an atmospheric set of downtempo instrumental hip hop tracks – on sister label Ntone in 2000, it was 2006's Biscuits for Breakfast album that set Fink officially on Ninja Tune. And it set him far apart from the rest of the label, going his way to becoming a full-blown, guitar-picking singer-songwriter. Two subsequent full-lengths – 2007's Distance and Time and 2009's Sort of Revolution have seen Fink further develop this new sound.
On the topic of sound, noise manipulator Amon Tobin came back around at the beginning of 2007 with Foley Room, his sixth studio album, and a long player that was called his "darkest work yet." Tobin was inspired by the work of Foley artists: a Foley room is where the sound effects are recorded for films; Foley artists use their imagination and ingenuity to make the right noise for the situation they are presented with. Amon and a team of assistants headed out into the streets with high-sensitivity microphones and recorded found sounds from tigers roaring to cats eating rats, from wasps to falling chickpeas, kitchen utensils to motorbikes to water dripping from a tap. Added to this were the sounds of The Kronos Quartet, Stefan Schneider, and Sarah Pagé, Tobin traveling from Foley rooms in Montreal to San Francisco to Seattle and back as he collected them.
Kevin Martin began developing his sound further as The Bug, after other projects such as GOD, Techno Animal, Ice, and Curse of the Golden Vampire. The Bug's second album in 2003, Pressure, demonstrated a fully formed aesthetic – stark spaces, gleefully subsonic bass – holding collaborations with vocalists such as Toastie Taylor, Wayne Lonesome and Daddy Freddy. 2008's London Zoo, meanwhile, was The Bug's third album – and first for Ninja Tune. Recorded over three years with its maker living in his studio, without a kitchen or shower, the album included collaborations with Warrior Queen, Tippa Irie, Burial, Kode9 collaborator Spaceape, and even singer-toaster Ricky Ranking showing up on three tracks. Erik Martiny said it is a "multivocal, spoken-sung, collaborative album." It appeared in many outlets' "best of 2008" lists.
The year 2008 launched Ninja Tune's You Don't Know, their sixth official label sampler, and, like its predecessors, contained high-quality picks from their major releases, with select remixes and a few rarities. While 2007's Well Deep multimedia package shed light on Big Dada, Ninja Cuts drew a healthy cross-section from all three Ninja-associated labels.
2008 also marked Daedelus' first official Ninja album, Love to Make Music To, after their previous albums Exquisite Corpse and Denies the Day's Demise had been licensed by Ninja Tune. The album showcased the L.A. artist's diverse nature and their skills as a multi-instrumentalist as well as their engrossing stylistic shifts. Additionally that year, The Qemists released their debut album, Join the Q. AllMusic said that the group had constructed "some of the most energetic breakbeats of the late 2000s".
In 2008, an international group of party organizers, activists, and artists – including Coldcut – received a grant from the Intelligent Energy Department of the European Union, to create a project that promoted intelligent energy and environmental awareness to the youth of Europe. The result was Energy Union, a piece of VJ cinema, a political campaign, a music tour, a party, an art exhibition, and social media hub. Energy Union toured 12 EU countries throughout 2009 and 2010, completing 24 events in total. Coldcut created the Energy Union show for the tour, a one-hour Audio/Visual montage on the theme of Intelligent Energy. In presenting new ideas for climate, environmental, and energy communication strategies, the Energy Union tour was well received, and reached a widespread audience in cities across the UK, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, and the Czech Republic.missing reference
Speech Debelle's debut album, 2009's Speech Therapy, finally scored Big Dada a Mercury Prize, after prior nominations for Roots Manuva's Run Come Save Me and Ty's Upwards. With the album, NME called her: "one to seriously watch."