This one's going to be a bit of a rough one for me.
I'll preface this one with a few qualifiers.
This review is not meant to slag anyone, it's just my views and opinions
as a lover of fine music and the mad skills that go with the art of
spinning a blend of ambient, triphop, flipflop, jungle or whatever you
want to call the stuff that the ninja's put out.
Fast forward to last night.
I pretty much agree with greg's assessment of the night.
Only I got there before it started and left before it ended.
With the exception of Riz (who was absolutely amazing), the rest of the
night was a MAJOR letdown.
What I've come to expect when the ninja's come to town is sheer
excitement.
Previous shows featured unbelievable performances by kev and PC on the
2x4's, crazy turntable solos by the 'kid' or amazing visuals via hex.
Even on the sophomore tour, where a bunch of the label's artists were
thrown on stage and forced to spin (or die!), there was much to be
enjoyed due to the risks that some of these 'green' dj's (like amon
tobin) were taking and the excellent music selection they brought with
them.
Unfortunately, little of this was to be found in last nights show,
either in the music played or in the 'vinyl manipulation' department.
Once again, not trying to talk shit but my expectation of a very high
caliber of performance from the ninja's got knocked down a bit.
Dj Anna played a lackluster set of trip/hip-hop, letting entire songs
play and mixing the ambient intro of the next tune into the last 10
seconds of the previous one. She did do a small amount of scratching
but always had the levels down on the scratch side so you couldn't
really even hear it.
Not very exciting, and it didn't really look like Anna was having too
good of a time either.
Then, Neotropic...completely fucking wicked!
Riz played a great set, seamlessly mixing pre-recorded dats, records and
playing samples. Sounds simple but it wasn't! She dropped in madly
distorted drum loops, sampled bassgrooves and brilliant vocals, on the
fly.
Her mix was always spot on and flowed seamlessly through many different
styles and themes.
In short, one of the nicest live sets I've ever seen. Very enjoyable!
Then came (I believe) Ollie from the Herbalizer.
He must have been having a real bad night because the first few songs he
mixed some fairly boring hip-hop head to tail, third and forth mix's
were tennis shoes (plus a few rocks) in the drier and at that point, I
decided to go outside and have a smoke. Halfway thru his set, my
girlfriend came outside also and said that it wasn't getting any better.
45 minutes later, we saw him walking outside so I ran back in to find
Chocolate Weasel playing 'electro's greatest hits, vol 1 & 2', not that
I mind that too much. Then they moved into jungle, dropping a few
miscellaneous dub plates and dats. Unfortunately, the reoccurring theme
of 7 second mixes and sloppy beatmatching was evident again.
Only of slight interest was the guy behind the equipment, who I'm
assuming was Marc Royal. He was doing lots of weird shit with his right
hand, punching buttons and stuff with a stylus (or patch cord?!?) and
adding scratching samples (tape loops?) via a third dj mixer in front of
him but it wasn't really working very well. I'd rather heard someone
who could really scratch.
I hate when technical stuff like this takes away from my enjoying an
event that most other people seam to be getting into, but what can I
say?
I'm a dj...
I rather liked a few of the original songs they played but couldn't help
but think that it sounded like tpower but not quite as tight and a bit
cheesier.
At that point, a little light bulb popped on in my head that said:
Chocolate Weasel = taking a piss?
I'm not sure if this is the reality, but it's the way it seamed.
Being a huge tpower fan, I wanted to stay, at least until the end of
their set but didn't make it, due to the ever increasing headache that
both my girlfriend and I were noticing, possibly due to the excessively
loud (and overly bright) rock 'n roll sound system at the Troubadour.
I wanted to stay for Vadim too, but it just wasn't in the cards.
As we're walking out the door, the first strings of that 'Life in Mono'
song drifted to our ears and we ran down the street, screaming.
Once again, I suppose I sound like a big sour puss and wish to hell I
didn't.
Riz made part of the night wonderful...the rest of the performances were
so mundane they made the remainder of the night excruciatingly boring.
I've always associated Ninjatune with the saying "it's ALL good!', but
found out last night that that's not always the case with anything.
Hopefully it WAS just an off night for everyone!
Word to the mothership,
brock.
np: Mad Professor - 'Dub Maniacs On The Rampage'