There was a time in the mid/late 90’s when London’s Ninja Tune records virtually ruled the digital underground, with practically everything they released becoming an instant trip-hop/chillout/nu-jazz/ambient/drum & bass classic. Ninja Tune’s greatest achievement was legitimizing “weird” electronic music and introducing it to the dancefloor, and even the radio – it’s easy to forget that 90’s hipsters were dancing to something other than rave and big beat. You Don’t Know is the fifth in the label’s Ninja Cuts compilation series. While Ninja Tune might not command the underground respect it once did, it’s still one of the freshest labels in existence. Far from relying upon its old, outmoded standby genres, label founder Coldcut assembles here an all-star cast of mysterious dancefloor gods for this three-disc voyage through the oceans of “indie” club music. Though everything found here could tangentially be considered “dance” music, the variety of material is simply stellar: Ghislain Poirier, Bonobo, Daedalus, Mike Ladd, King Geedorah, and others bring the abstract hip-hop sound in which Ninja Tune has recently been specializing, The Cinematic Orchestra, The Herbaliser, and Yppah peddle homegrown acid jazz/funk, Roots Manuva and Ty rock over bottomless dub rhythms, and Amon Tobin, Mr. Scruff, and Coldcut himself update the classic Ninja Tune sound for a new generation of listeners. It’s all quality, but the most unusual tracks here are those that warrant repeated listens: Pop Levi’s buzzy electro-glam “Dita Dimoné”, RJD2’s barnstorming percussion-heavy “True Confessions”, and TTC’s over-the-top Francophone hip-hoppy “Travailler” are all marvelous dancefloor fillers, proving that Ninja Tune is even more relevant and impressive now than it was in its heyday over a decade ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment