Revenge of the reissue!
Steve Lalla
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photo: Ninja Jeff: The Waye of the Wig
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Ninja Tune get their kicks with long-awaited re-releases
Synonymous with enduring quality and originality, a deep respect for the Ninja Tune name has been engraved on my psyche since my developmental years. I can recall a distant time a good decade ago where, as a muddled and idealistic teen, some friends and I first happened upon the concept, unsure whether "Ninja Tune" referred to a producer, an album or even a type of music. Either way, tossing the three def-sounding syllables around made us feel cool, and the two words seemed vastly more applicable than "trip-hop," "acid-jazz" or "ambient" when we tried to describe the style.Poring over ancient runes deep into the early mornings, we slowly traced the Ninja lineage, discovering the mysterious entities behind Coldcut, DJ Food and the entire label, unearthing the identities of mad scientists Funki Porcini, Up, Bustle & Out, Luke Vibert, Amon Tobin and DJ Vadim.
Nowadays, the Ninja Tune label has become a household name in Montreal, at least in the trendy Plateau, largely due to the efforts of Philippa Klein and Jeff Waye who, seven years ago, opened the North American headquarters for the London-based label here. Prior to the arrival of said duo, the U.S. and Canadian markets had been receiving butchered, defiled versions of the originals, repackaged and represented by U.S. label Instinct/Shadow.
Waye recalls these violations with difficulty. "Show us on the doll where they touched you," he begins.
"Basically, at the time they [Instinct/Shadow] had this weird stance that they had to Americanize
everything and cater to what they thought would make an easier sell over here. They changed artwork, they re-sequenced records, and the most extreme example was that they refused to believe that an artist called DJ Food could be sold, so they made some lame compilation of DJ Food's Jazz Brakes 4 & 5 and marketed it as an artist called Hedfunk. They took Ninja Cuts Vol.1 & 2 and turned them into some series called Earthrise and put some shit ambient-looking covers on them.""In a way I have to thank them as it made it very easy for me to convince my U.K. partners to bring me on board to set up the domestic office, so that complete creative control could remain within Ninja Tune."
The road to the reissues has been long and arduous but, with the reissue of CDs by Food, Porcini, Up, Bustle & Out, 9 Lazy 9 and the groundbreaking Ninja Cuts compilations this fall, Jeff and Phil's long-time dreams have been realized.
"Since the day we opened in '96, I've wanted to get these out properly," Jeff explains. "The versions that Instinct/Shadow circulated were downright embarrassing, and they continued to repackage more and more wack compilations derived from these records. For instance, when we did our 10th anniversary box set Xen Cuts, they turned around and released some bogus comp called The Shadow Years to try and cash in on all the press we had kicked up. Shameless fuckers."
Replete with their original packaging and sequencing, 11 releases from '94 to '96 have also been juiced up with bonus cuts and B-sides for your listening pleasure, many available on CD for the first time. "A lot of the stuff is B-sides from singles released to support these records when they originally came out."
Ninja Tune artists TTC at SAT, Oct. 22; Mr. Scruff (DJ Set) at SAT, Oct. 25; Kid Koala's Short Attention Span Theater with DJ P-Love at Club Soda, Nov. 6; DJ Vadim with BluRum 13 at Sala Rossa, Nov. 8
| Ninja Tune strikes out and makes names! |
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Nice article on Ninja Tune. There really aren't enough articles on the real movers and shakers of the Montreal sound.
Hey, I'm all for the artists getting all the glory but let's face it, if it wasn't for units like Ninja Tune pushing them right along they'd NEVER get there. It's a tough business but it's nice to see that there are still some people out there who trying to escape the vanilla shadow the mainstream sound has cast over the business.
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Pedro Eggers
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