Just got word from Japan: The new album, complete with two bonus tracks and Solid Psyche Mix CD, is available at Tower Records branches and Qetic Store.
Tower branches that should have it are: Shibuya / Shinjuku / Akihabara / Ikebukuro / Sapporo Pivot / Yokohama More’s / Nagoya Parco / Nagoya Kintetsu Passe / Umeda Osaka Maru building / Namba / Umeda NU Chaya / Kobe / Kyoto / Hiroshima / Fukushima and also online at Tower on a first come first served basis.
The album is out in Japan, as of Dec 3rd actually, the reason for an early release is to do with trying to encourage people to buy domestic products rather than imports (which aren’t as expensive in comparison to over here). It’s formatted for a jewel case and some of the artwork is different as well as the inclusion of two bonus tracks – ‘Beast of Prey’ (an instrumental of ‘Prey’) and ‘All Covered in Darkness pt.2′. The latter track is a new version and this will be the only place to get either of these on a physical release, with ‘Beast of Prey’ unavailable anywhere else.
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The great tradition of ‘bonus tracks for Japan’ is another incentive for people to buy western product in the east and copies usually make their way back west at hugely inflated prices. I checked Tower and HMV in Japan and both had the CD for sale, also someone tipped me off that Google Chrome will translate the pages into any language of your choice if you use that browser. Selected independent stores should have a free ‘Solid Psyche’ mix CD bundled with the album as another incentive to buy which I’ve tinkered with and added to from the mix I did late last year for Solid Steel.
Lush.
Want.
Now.
etc.
I saw this shower the other night at the 100 Club (just joking – they’re a lovely bunch of people), amazing performance and this is an amazing album, just released on Ninja Tune. I never thought I’d hear a brass band mix so well with jazz, rock, female vocals and radiophonic-esque electronics, but it does.
Also the whole album was mixed by Thighspaulsandra, known for his work with Julian Cope and Coil among others and it sounds gorgeous. Having remixed the track ‘As The Tower Falls’ for Loka’s digital Temporary External single, I can tell he had his work cut out for him and this is one band that likes to use a lot of parts in an arrangement. Check out the beauty of the 12 tracks over at the Ninja shop. Even though I was lucky enough to hear most of this last year the album easily makes my top 10 albums of 2011.
This has been under wraps for a while but I can finally reveal…
Three 45 minute sets (due to limited spaces in the Planetarium) of a specially reconstructed version of the album including exclusive material. I’m currently working with the astronomers at the Observatory, building a bespoke show for their 360 degree hemispherical screen. Tickets are very limited, only 82 for each show, so be quick if you want to see this http://ninjatune.net/shop/tickets
This has been under wraps for a while but I can finally reveal…
Three 45 minute sets (due to limited spaces in the Planetarium) of a specially reconstructed version of the album including exclusive material. I’m currently working with the astronomers at the Observatory, building a bespoke show for their 360 degree hemispherical screen. Tickets are very limited, only 82 for each show, so be quick if you want to see this http://ninjatune.net/shop/tickets
Last night I saw Kid Koala‘s new show ‘Space Cadet’ and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen with a DJ at the helm before. Part gig, part story, part stand up comedy and a lot of audience participation, it was not your usual gig. I took my family and there was a moment when we thought the kids wouldn’t get in even though we went to the 7pm show but it was fine. Everyone sat down and there was no PA – only headphones for everyone.
Eric sat down for most of the show and chatted as much as he played, featuring musical excerpts from his new book and CD – ‘Space Cadet’, the forthcoming blues album on Ninja Tune, his Yo Gabba Gabba routine (where he donned his Koala suit) and the always awesome ‘Moon River’ routine. Members of the audience were invited to play bells, music boxes and Asteroids (destroying pre-photographed faces of themselves),whirl tubes to the music and thumb wrestle!
As well as this there was a collection of original art and a table full of 3D plants featured in the book, games, space echo and turntable recorder to play with and cookies to decorate. Go and ‘experience’ it if you can, you’ll not see anything like it for a long time again.
Well this is a turn up, 10 vintage Plug tracks from 1997, rescued from the vaults of Luke Vibert aka Wagon Christ. For all those who loved the Plug EPs, the ‘Drum n Bass For Papa’ LP and the ‘Extreme Possibilities’ remix of 2 Player from back in the day – you won’t be disappointed. These are not just some so-so offcuts, best left in the cupboard, some of this is better than some of the material from the 90’s IMO. CD and vinyl in January on Ninja Tune.
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I’d missed these previously but there have been 6 different B-Music podcasts in the last 18 months floating on the Finders Keepers Soundcloud page. I can recommend the Andy Votel, Benjamin Hatton and Alfonso’s mixes plus you get preview tracks from recent Vannier and Bollywood releases.
Full preview of ‘Prey’, the track I did with JG Thirlwell aka Foetus / Steroid Maximus / Manorexia / Clint Ruin / Wiseblood etc. etc. on my new EP. To say I’m happy with this is an understatement, it was a huge honour to get JG’s contribution after being a fan of his for over two decades.
DJ Food – ‘Prey’ feat. J.G. Thirlwell by Ninja Tune
In 2002 I remixed his track ‘Suspect’ from the album ‘Flow’ (still one of his best) for the compilation ‘Blow’. Instead of payment I asked for either a remix or a guest vocal on a future project and it took nine years to call in the favour. JG came to the UK in March this year and we agreed to meet up at Matt Johnson‘s place as I had tracks for both of them. I spent a hugely enjoyable morning chatting with them over tea, talking about everything from the state of the music business to The Monkees.
This was one of those tracks that came together incredibly fast and, upon delivery of the vocal, I had to make very few changes to anything, just a slight rearrangement of a vocal here and there. An instrumental, retitled ‘Beast of Prey’, will be available as a bonus on the Japanese CD of ‘The Search Engine’ in December.
Last week we hid 5 different parts of ‘Magpie Music’, the track I did with 2econd Class Citizen, around the web on different sites and encouraged people to find them with their search engines.
Thanks to all the sites who took part – Clash music, Seeks music, ireallylovemusic and Future sequence and please have a look round them as they are all worthwhile places for new music. Here are those segments now, a few had trouble with Friday’s download but they got there in the end.
Part 1 “Finders Keepers”
Part 2 “They Turned Their Faces Down”
Part 3 “A Positive No”
Part 4 “Eye of the Needle”
Part 5 “No More Stars”
The gorgeous Ghost Box 7″ Study Series continues with a double header from Pye Corner Audio with The Advisory Circle – out in two weeks, pre-order it here.
Finally, the DJ Food album – ‘The Search Engine’ – is available to pre-order in the Ninja Tune shop. It comes in many forms so pay attention:
• Regular 12 track album CD – gatefold card cover and 20 pg booklet
• Ltd 48 pg comic-sized booklet full of artwork, photos, lyrics and more + 12 track album CD in card wallet + 7″ 
flexi disc of a bonus track not on the album
The limited package with the flexi disc is at an early bird price of just £12 at the Ninjashop at the moment but you’ll have to be quick.
• Regular 12 track album – mp3 download + pdf booklet
• Regular 12 track album – WAV download + pdf booklet
• Expanded & Extended 17 track album – 24 bit WAV download + pdf booklet
This version adds 5 tracks that were on the previous 3 vinyl EPs but didn’t make the cut for the CD album ‘proper’ + has full versions of tracks that were edited down for the regular version, up to 4 minutes more on one track. Some versions are only available on this edition as I remixed several older tracks for the album but edited them down for the final selection – this is your chance to be a completist.
For all those wondering where the vinyl is? Well, the three EPs released so far make up a version of the album (albeit an alternate universe one) and all come with nice poster covers and inner sleeves so, if you bought these then, you already have the album of sorts. That being said, there are different mixes, edits and the vocal version of GIANT on the CD and digital versions which aren’t yet on wax. We have ideas about that but I don’t want to jump the gun without things being set in stone. Ninja should be repressing some quantities of the earlier EPs so we’ll see what happens, don’t write a new vinyl version off just yet.
The hunt continues, part 1 was on the Ninja Tune Soundcloud and part 2 was on the Clashmusic.com site. Part 3 is out there somewhere, you just need to find it…
Love this cover of JRocc‘s new single, artwork by Gustavo Eandi.
With one week away until the release of my ‘Magpies, Maps & Moons‘ EP Ninja are giving you the chance to download 5 different segments of the track ‘Magpie Music’ that I did with 2econd Class Citizen. This is a suite of tracks we made and then stitched together to form an 11 minute piece on the new EP and album, various tracks have been extracted from it and cleaned up to form little standalone DJ tracks for you to enjoy.
The only catch is, you have to find them, Magpie-like, and steal them from wherever they are hiding on the web using your computer’s search engine (incidentally, the new album’s title). The first one is up now, four more go online each day this week and the EP is released on Monday 7th November. Lots of exciting things happening on the lead up to this release at the moment, I’ll give all the info as each thing is confirmed but January is going to be packed at this rate.
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Equinox Records out of Berlin have been around for a while and they currently have a sale on in their shop so I recently hoovered up some bits I fancied. The packaging and design aesthetic of the label is very strong, being overseen by the label head Gunter Stoppel aka DJ Scientist. There is a look of unbleached card, circular designs, B&W inner sleeve photography and a multitude of formats including colour and clear vinyl, 5″ and postcard records, cassettes and other oddities. It’s a varied roster, mainly concentrating on instrumental beats and electronica with a heavy leaning toward Hip Hop and sampling. Of course I would be first to recommend 2econd Class Citizen but the new David Vangel album is excellent as are releases by Davinci and Deckard amongst others.
Two new Ninja releases with tracks by myself and 2econd Class Citizen. Loka‘s ‘Temporary External’ EP has remixes from us both of tracks from the forthcoming album ‘Passing Place’.
My EP – ‘Magpies, Maps & Moons’ – is the last in the trilogy before they get compiled into a new form on the album due in January 2012. Both are available to pre-order from the Ninjashop as digital downloads with mine also coming in 12″ form too. Click the covers for previews and direct order links.
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This is my KLF mix ‘The Sound of Mu(sic)’ as visualised with the new Soundcloud plug in Spectrogr.am. It doesn’t seem to like Firefox at the moment (maybe I should update) but it works in Safari fine.
My Boards of Canada mix came out a little weird round the edges, I added the colour as I couldn’t get the colour on Spectrogr.am to work for love nor money.