France – Lyon, this Friday – special XX set,
Ninja XX USA – NYC, SF, LA, Ninja XX Japan – Tokyo, Osaka,
Classic Material – starts October 16th at The CAMP (City Arts and Music Project) and is FREE!. My turn is December 18th – ’89 Hip Hop classics and deeper cuts all night, go here for a free Chris Read mix
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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Thanks to Hit + Run for the T-shirt printing in the chill out arch which was a nice touch and it was a thrill to see mine and doc Vek’s designs being printed live. See them printing the back of my shirt in the video below
[flickrvideo width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.flickr.com/photos/strictly-kev/5049546768/[/flickrvideo]
Chu did some great work in the outside bar between arch 1 & 2, probably not seen by most though and hopefully not painted over in a hurry either.
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I had designed an archive gallery which was pasted onto 5×7 feet boards and there were several huge banners and posters around too.
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Out in the tunnel / entrance there were specially made gobos showing Ninja logos and in arch 1 Mutate Britain had constructed a huge Ninja head with lasers and smoke coming from the eyes.
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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.
This lovely A2 sized custom poster by Doc Vek, £5 to you, 100 only, remainder will be put on the Ninja shop next week. Also Hit + Run will be screen printing a selection of 5 different Ninja designs on T-shirts for people during the gig. Not sure the price or exact designs yet but possibly this poster will be one of them in some form too. More on-location art comes from Chu who painted the mural on the 333 last month and SheOne who has an exhibition just opened alongside Pride, Prime, Fuel and Partism.
A couple of juicy Ninja XX features are on the magazine racks at the moment. The latest issue of Blueprint contains a six page feature on the artwork and design of the label with quotes from yours truly. Also in the same issue are pictures of the Manchester gallery that Agents of Change painted recently (see gallery above), nice to see them getting some props in an architecture magazine.
You can also now read this article online here
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Clash magazine has a nice little 8 page commemorative foldout too in their October issue where I pick some of my favourite sleeve designs on one page.
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‘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.
One of the nicest things about the job I do is meeting other artists and like-minded people, and sometimes you get unexpected surprises because of this. Two recent packages turned up within days of each other and bought a smile to my face. The first was from Nigel Peake and he’d sent a unique screen print of the Ninja Family Tree he’d designed for the XX box set. This had reversed colours – blue on white – and he had hand-coloured my name on the print. Beautiful. He has now made a limited, signed edition available via his site so, if you didn’t get the box set, prefer the reversed colours and want a fold-free version, head on over there.
This week saw not one but two posters from Doc Vek at the door, his design for the DJ Kentaro show earlier in the year (right) and the forthcoming Ninja Tune party in Bristol at Motion (left). This was one of only three made and I’ve already framed it for the studio. I loved it so much that I suggested to Ninja that they have some made for the Ewer St. party in London on Oct 2nd. They will be personalised with the date, location and line up and probably available from the Ninja shop afterwards.
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…
Some more (better) images and a great little film shot by Anthony Dickenson and Dan Lowe of the Ninja Tune XX mural Chu painted outside the 333 in Shoreditch the other week. He’s painting something else special at the Ewer Street gig on October 2nd alongside She-1, can’t wait.
The Light Surgeons’ short film about luck, ‘Shimazeltov’, has been shortlisted in the documentary category for the Vimeo awards! The film focuses on the Jewish community and their ideas about luck, it’s insightful, humorous and beautifully shot and framed.
I’m pretty excited about this because not only is it an excellent short but my wife assistant produced it and my kids make a fleeting cameo in it. The Vimeo festival takes place in NYC in October, fingers crossed crossed… You can VOTE for it here and more info about the awards is here and, if you have 10 minutes, please take a look at this beautiful film.
Schlimazeltov! from THE LIGHT SURGEONS on Vimeo.
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.
Trailer for a 15 minute CGI version of Shaun Tan’s book, ‘The Lost Thing’ – looks gorgeous.
More info at his site
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
I’m very proud to announce my first design entry on the Hardformat blog. Run for three and a half years now, it’s a site dedicated to “reaching for the sublime in music design”, both past and present. One of the first things I think any designer finding the site would think is, “I wonder if I’m on here?”, the second would be, “I want to be featured here”, if they don’t find their work. The site already published the original mock up image of the set a few months back and we entered into a dialogue about it. That turned into me writing up a lengthy piece detailing some of the process involved in realising the gargantuan project.
www.hardformat.org/5200/ninja-tune-xx/
I helped take down the Ninja Tune exhibition at Black Dog today, it’s all gone, wrapped up, shipped back to its owners. Thanks to all who came down and all at Black Dog, especially Marianne Templeton, who put in a ton of effort to make it happen.
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. “