I have to feature this because I love the fact that it’s a full page in Creative Review and the tag line Think Tank came up with for it. Thanks to all at Think Tank Media for the superb job they did on this project and believing in and liking it enough to take out such an ad.
The selection of tracks I mixed together for the recent 6 mix show on 6 Music, hosted by Coldcut is now up on the new Ninja Tune XX Soundcloud page. No jingles or chat, direct from the source, my favourites from the recent XX box set. Check the XX page for more mixes including Eskmo and DJ Kentaro.
Urb magazine’s website has had a makeover! In the run up to our US dates there’s plenty to see at the site including interviews, mixes, videos and a chapter from the Ninja Tune book.
Keen listeners of DJ Food material will have picked up that the late Dudley Moore’s fantastic score to the 1967 film ‘Bedazzled’ (NOT the recent remake!) is a big favourite. I’ve sampled it a couple of times now (both licensed too) and the record has been long out of print. Several dodgy bootlegs have surfaced over the years, mainly on the Harkit label and Jonny Trunk has long been trying to reissue it with little success as the Moore estate seems zipped up tighter than a nun’s habit.
But even they seem to have cottoned on to the fact that it’s a great score that’s in demand as I stumbled across this last week – a legit reissue, from the Moore estate, remastered from the original tapes, with two alternate versions of the ‘single’ from the album too! Sadly it’s CD only and how far into the stores it’s going to make it is unknown but it’s available from the official Dudley Moore site along with several other releases.
Party of the Year (so far), no question. Amazing response from everyone involved and an incredible effort to make happen. I can’t quite believe it happened actually, didn’t manage to see even half the acts though so am looking forward to seeing photos and hearing what people thought.
I did see a bit of DJ Kentaro, who was sick as usual, Mark Pritchard dropping ‘Warhead’ was nice, Robin from Hexstatic was ripping it up in arch 2 early on and Koala is always a treat but unfortunately we had to set up during his set so couldn’t really take much notice. I really felt as though everyone I spoke to was so happy to be there, thanks to all who came down and queued in the rain, you made it the success it was. Also thanks to Martin LeSanto-Smith whose photos here show just a tiny glimpse of what went on.
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Wow, what a week, seems I’m just coming down from it now. Full on all-hands-on-deck stuff from everyone involved in all this weeks Ninja events. Wednesday night I hopped on the bus with King Cannibal, Daedelus, Eskmo, Mox and other assorted Ninjas, bound for Brussels. Thursday saw the XX party at the Ancienne Belgique, otherwise known as the AB, easily one of the best venues in Europe both for sound and stage and backstage catering, which is phenomenal.
After a complete breakfast fail where Mox and I waited 30 minutes for a Croque Monsieur (!) I went record shopping with Daedelus, King Cannibal, Jon More and Kid Koala. Found some great flexi discs – a 5″, 7″ and a book with loads inside as pages – a Halloween Library record and a rather overpriced Jazz/Moog album featuring Herbie Hancock and Bernard Purdie I’d been after for a while. Back at the AB for soundcheck, various other Ninjas were arriving, The Bug, Andreya Triana, The Heavy, DK, as well as staff from the office and Big Dada as well. Jon More regaled Brendan Eskmo with the origins of ‘piss poor’ and ‘haven’t got a pot to piss in’ and Alfred Daedelus compared his cat paint phone app with our tour manager Suzi’s – rock n roll! A huge birthday cake was wheeled out for the evening meal, decorated with the XX logo.
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The gig was amazing, the show long sold out, the second club room rammed all night. The merch stall had three copies of the box set that all sold in less than 5 minutes. Kid Koala debuted his Yo Gabba Gabba Koala suit and a Happy Birthday routine, Dorian Concept wowed everyone with his playing, DK and I had a great set and The Bug had everyone running for ear plugs as he cranked up the volume. A great night which we later found out was webcast live much to our delight.
‘Trailer’ for a new album by I, The Phoenix, the CD comes with a 3D booklet and glasses.
Love stuff like this but you’ll need red and blue glasses to view it properly
I, the phoenix // stereoscopic trailer from I, the phoenix on Vimeo.
Coldcut host a 2 hour show celebrating the 20th anniversary of the label this Sunday on 6 Music’s 6 Mix show . Special mixes have been compiled by myself, Mr Scruff, Daedelus and Toddla T (doing a Roots Manuva special) showcasing tracks from the new XX compilations and Ninja classics. It starts at 8pm and will be available on the BBC’s Listen Again feature for a week afterwards.
What a week this is turning out to be 
Congratulations to DK who put this together with interviews with Coldcut and Pete Quicke.
You can listen here (iTunes link) or here (non-iTunes link)
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5 day Ninja-related features on the highly esteemed site including an extract from the new book by Stevie Chick, the box set reviewed, Roots Manuva and Coldcut interviews…
At last the day is here, two decades old and a teenager no more. Ninja is 20 and we celebrate the date – and also the 200th post here – in style with two double CD sets, four 12″s and a lavish box set which is now sold out on the Ninjashop although stores will have it from today.
The book, ‘Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats & Pieces’ has been in the shops a month now, 192 pages and over 1,200 images charting the history of the label from Coldcut’s late 80’s chart hits to today.
This week’s Solid Steel has been given over to celebrating the occasion with an anniversary mix of classics from all the labels by DK and a one hour interview with Coldcut and label manager Peter Quicke about where it all began and where it’s going.
Solid Steel Radio Show 17/9/2010 Part 1 + 2 – DK by Ninja Tune & Big Dada
Solid Steel Radio Show 17/9/2010 Part 3 + 4 – Interview with Coldcut & Peter Quicke by Ninja Tune & Big Dada
After that it’s shows around the world, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, NYC, San Francisco, LA, Tokyo and Osaka, King Cannibal’s ‘The Way Of The Ninja’ mix CD and Zen TV pt.2 on DVD.
Some more (not very good) pictures of the XX 12″s – out Monday. 1 & 2 only available with a purchase code from the XX box set, 3-6 available for general sale. A mystery seventh 12″ with two remixes of a Ninja classic unavailable anywhere else, will creep into circulation shortly.
and a sneaky reason to own all six 12″s, when put together, the spines spell Ninja Tune XX
Most of you will have heard, or at least heard about, the two new DJ Shadow tracks that officially came to light last week via his site, after being out and about, ripped from radio broadcasts for a bit. ‘Def Surrounds Us / I’ve Been Trying’ caused a stir last week which is no mean feat in this day and age from an artist who is approaching 20 years of official releases. In the digital age these things are easy to come by, not so easy is an actual hard copy, pressed onto vinyl, dark blue vinyl to be exact, with a unique handrawn front cover no less.
But they do exist and Shadow has been giving them away to DJs and fans via his site and posts on Twitter. There are rumoured to be only 100 copies at the moment, each with its own unique sleeve design and stamp bearing the legend ‘Handmade, because you’re worth it’ on the back. I was lucky enough to receive a copy earlier this week after a heads up from Joost over at the Sole Sides board and people have begun adding images of their copies to Discogs on the release’s entry page. Here’s mine but I have several other ‘handmade’ Shadow records I’ve collected over the years that I thought I’d share with you.
This is my copy of the ‘Enuff (DJ Fresh remix)/This Time’ single, this was a regular white label copy that I’m pretty sure I customised with a sticker from elsewhere. There are 100 copies of a fully sprayed and stencilled Paul Insect version that were sold through DJ Shadow.com but alas I don’t have one of those.
In Tokyo a few years ago I stumbled across a pile of these in the Shibuya HMV, supposedly a limited edition for Japan with hand silk screened covers and an extended version of ‘Roy’s Theme’ from the KeepinTime compilation.
Going even further back we have the ‘Monosyllabik’ promo 12″ that was sneaked out before the Private Press hit, confounding everyone. So much so that I found one in the local exchange for £1, some DJs obviously weren’t too hip to what it was or didn’t care and passed it on. I have three different copies of this: one I was sent as a promo, the other I found in the exchange and the third was from eBay. This is the best of the three, including as it does, all 10 stickers on the front (there were said to be 10 different sleeves designs out there at the time).
… and last but not least, my very own creation, one of five handmade (and mixed) CDRs of the ‘Press Cuttings’ sampler mix I made of selections from the Private Press in 2002. This aired on Solid Steel and I gave Shadow a copy after a gig which he was then kind enough to add to his official discography later. Each disc has a different image on it and the covers are all made up of graphics from old private press record booth sleeves. Hear it at the bottom of the page.
Press Cuttings (The Private Press Compacted) by DJ Food
PS: a section of a Quietus interview with Shadow about the making of the Def Surrounds Us sleeve artwork:
“On the 12”s, all of the sleeves are one-offs. When it was conceived, it was the purest way I could think of to let the music out of my hands and into the chance environment of society… in the most pure and unfucked with way. It wasn’t coming from the label, it wasn’t coming laoded with information. And if I’d had my way originally, it wouldn’t even have had my name on it. It would have been totally anonymous… It would have just let time and people’s own research and ideas determine what it was. I guess in a certain sense cooler heads prevailed and it has come out as a compromise where when you first look at it you’re not going to know what it is or who it is by. But for people like you and me who look at records every day you’re just going to stop and go: “What the fuck is this?” Because it’s removing the art from its proper context. In most cases I would have my kids doodle something and then when they got bored with it I would add my own hyper detail to it. I’m not a great illustrator but I like to draw and my dad was a graphic designer. I like spending a lot of time on pointillism and detail. It doesn’t really matter what the image really is and in fact I try and keep myself from representing anything. In some of them I’ve even added a little note that says, “Please add to the artwork before you pass it along.” We’ve added stickers on some. I like the idea that the art is never quite finished. It was inspired by a lot of other covers that I’ve seen. Obviously this kind of thing has been done before in the DIY scene and the minimal synth scene of the early 80s, so I’m not claiming to have invented the process but I intended it as the most honest and pure delivery mechanism that I could think of. “
So, Nigel Peake is in town, fresh from painting a mural and we’re wandering around Pimlico like a couple of tourists. Clutching an A-Z and an iPhone, we’re trying to find the Chelsea Space which is currently hosting the Barney Bubbles exhibition, Process.
Bubbles, born Colin Fulcher, sadly committed suicide in 1983 and has long been an unsung hero of British sleeve design but this has started to change in recent years after Paul Gorman’s book on his work, ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’, was published in 2008. Quickly selling out and starting to command high prices on the web it’s now been updated and expanded in a new edition.
Possibly one of the reasons Bubbles isn’t as widely know as, say, Neville Brody, Malcolm,Garrett, Hipgnosis, Peter Saville or Jamie Reid is because his work spanned both both ends of the seventies and beyond – the hippy / prog / rock and the punk eras – and never conceded to one house style for anyone. The two things he’s probably most known for – Hawkwind and Stiff Records – couldn’t be much further apart. Looking at one of his Hawkwind sleeves and then an Elvis Costello or Ian Dury from later you’d be hard-pressed to see any sort of stylistic link, yet he did them both.
After walking up and down the street way too many times, asking in the Tate to a bemused attendant and eventually finding the space via a round-the-houses route through the College of Art we realise we’d walked right past it. Failing to notice the sign outside the inconspicuous door set back from the main road, we should have stopped yakking and paid a bit more attention.
Anyway, once inside we were greeted by walls pasted with vintage music paper ads and posters of late 70’s vintage, a couple of old record players sporting various vinyl rarities, badges, stickers and a gorgeous rack of Ian Dury ‘Do It Yourself’ wallpaper-sleeved LPs. Right in, no messing about. Along the bottom of one wall were various publications all sporting BB covers including a John Cooper-Clark ‘Directory 1979’ an issue of the NME, Nova magazine and a Hawkwind programme.
A long, thin, tall corridor then stretches up before turning into the main exhibition room and one wall is covered with posters and record sleeves, the Hawkwind ones unfolded flat to show off their wares. Frustratingly the sharp viewing angle meant that the higher pieces were hard to see properly, further compounded by spot lighting which caused glare on anything in a PVC protective sleeve.
Into the main room, past a giant hanging Chuck Berry sculpture and here’s the good stuff. Cases of artifacts, portraits, sketchbooks, paintings, paste ups, reference books, even materials like Rotring pens he left behind. One wall is covered in original art paste up sheets, tracing paper with notes covering some of them, all hung with big bulldog clips which is a nice touch throughout. Another wall is full of beautifully presented black and white art, logos, layouts – a mixture of paint, pen, Letraset and whiteout – all of which would have blended into one under the camera later.
It must have been a difficult task for the curators to hang the work because it was so random, finding obvious themes and connections is almost impossible with Bubbles because each piece is so different from the next. Sure he has various tricks and techniques that he employs, his mixture of abstract and 3D shapes to make words for instance, but it’s as if he was always starting from scratch with each new piece. His foldout sleeves for Hawkwind and Elvis Costello are placed behind perspex but even they jut out at points, unable to be contained in such a space.
I’m no expert on Bubbles but this looks like a goldmine of his work for anyone remotely interested in him or the groups he designed for. Also this is a great reminder of how things were done decades ago, pre-digital, everything is hand drawn, painted, cut and pasted and it’s beautiful to see, especially all the whited out parts. Although by no means a complete overview – several pieces are conspicuous by their absence – the curators intend this to be more of a stepping stone to bigger things later and the new edition of the book should help this.
The exhibition is on now until October 23rd at Chelsea Space,
16 John Islip Street,
London, Sw1P 4JU
More details here
and visit Paul Gorman’s excellent blog on all things Barney Bubbles
and a good, quick overview of his work at feuilleton
The Paris show on Friday was great fun, packed out, great to see Vadim and Yarah on a Ninja bill again too. During mine and DK’s set someone pulled the fire alarm and all the power went off on stage for more than 5 minutes. Unfortunately we were in the middle of a drum n bass section so that went down like a damp squib. Before the gig I went up to the Galerie Chappe to see the exhibition of Ninja art and sleeve design that had been put on, apparently 1,500 people turned out for the opening! Ping Pong, who have done promotion for Ninja for over a decade now under the leadership of Fred ‘DJ Oof’ Elalouf, did a great job of putting together a show which included original art, paste up sheets, sleeves, huge posters and specially made prints of selected covers. They also made exclusive T-shirts, seats and a huge banner for the gigs which greeted me when I walked into the venue. See photos from the exhibition here (warning, this is a Facebook photo album), and it’s on until October 2nd. There are 4 more gigs coming up in Paris over the next few weeks including a huge, long sold out line up at La Machine and two gigs at the Pompidou Centre.
Tomorrow, DK and I do the first of the official Ninja Tune XX gigs in Paris, there’s an exhibition opening tonight with cover art and all sorts of material picked from the archives. I’m looking forward to seeing photos but couldn’t be there myself as we’re gearing up with our live set for the anniversary shows. The 4 deck set with be audio/visual with a heavy bias towards Ninja’s greatest moments from the last two decades.
Also just out in France is music magazine Trax which generously devotes a WHOLE ISSUE to the birthday celebrations and includes a free sampler CD too. Yours truly was interviewed about the artwork side of things and chose my favourite Ninja-related release (the suitably-titled ‘La Prochaine Fois’ seeing as this subject of this post is France). Also there are several of Nigel Peake’s drawings published including his study of the Ninja HQ and a mini version of the family tree poster available with the new box set.
I was having a shitty day with nothing going right when this was hand-delivered from the Think Tank offices out of the blue this afternoon. Eight months of hard slog, revisions, deadlines, corrections, proofs, more revisions, changed constructions and over 50 GB of information went into this.
A slipcase containing 3 hardback books – ’20 Years of Beats & Pieces’ was actually started back in July 2009 and completed just under a year later with a solid six months spent on it and little else. The other two, containing 6 CDs, 6 45’s, 2 posters, a booklet and a sticker sheet (which should have been straight forward but I had no end of hassle with) took another 2 months at least with meetings and discussions as to how the packaging would work going on since March. I even managed to find time to write a new track to go on the damned thing which is on one of the exclusive CDs.
When I look back at 2010 and think what I did that year, this is what will sum most of it up. If you have one on the way then you’re in for a treat believe me, want one, didn’t get round to buying one yet or were maybe sitting on the fence then there are still some available to buy before the big release day on September 20th.
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Black Dog Publishing open their doors on a Saturday this weekend for people who haven’t been able to make it to the Ninja 20th exhibition in the week. Between 12 and 5pm they will be open and Ninja will have a special pop up shop there selling selected items. I’m not entirely sure what will be available yet but there might be some of the new Ninja Tune XX releases and you will be able to buy the 20 years of Beats & Pieces book for £15 which is a fiver cheaper than the shops. It’s free and at 10a Acton Street, London,WC1X 9NG. This is the last week of the exhibition so it’s now or never…
A 254 track journey through 20 Years of Ninja, Ntone, Big Dada and Counter, as only Dylan Richards knows how. Free download when you buy the Ninja Tune XX box set, standalone CD coming shortly after. This redefines the term ‘mix CD’ in a lot of ways.
Sorry for the lousy, blurry photos, more soon as I get them
