DJ Food ‘Sunday At Bundy’s (DJ Food’s Audio Scrapbook)’

  • RELEASED: 1997/8
  • FORMAT: Cassette
  • LABEL: n/a
  • CAT No.: n/a
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: PC & Strictly
  • EXTRA ZEN: Discogs page
  • LISTEN: Side A / Side B

PC and I met Bundy K Brown the first night we played in Chicago as he introduced himself at the gig we played and, being fans of Tortoise, we were happy to accept his offer to show us round some of the vinyl spots in town the next day. He called our hotel the next morning and picked us up in his truck to take us record shopping and we happily dug for a few hours until he suggested we drop by the space where some of Tortoise were sharing so that we could meet the guys.

It was a huge loft and the image on the cover is a shot of their kitchen with a big Coltrane mural on the wall. John McEntire was there beavering away on something in the studio and it looked like the ultimate band practice / studio / live space. After this we went to Bundy’s own place (he’d lived at the Tortoise spot but given up his room when he became less involved in the band) and the photo inside of me looking up at the ceiling fan was taken there. What day of the week was this on? You guessed it… Sunday.

Neotropic ’15 Levels of Magnification’ Remixes

  • RELEASED: Jan 1998
  • FORMAT: 12″ / CDS
  • LABEL: NTONE
  • CAT No.: NTONE21 / NTONECDS21
  • DESIGN: Openmind / BDog
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: Michael Bexon
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Continuing the layout and observational theme in both title and sleeve. Riz showed me a brochure of a spying manual with a similar circular graphic and asked for something along those lines. I can’t remember where the circuit diagrams were a reference to this or whether I added them. The back cover graphic was made by BDog, a pseudonym for FSOL’s Brian Dougans.

Neotropic ’15 Levels of Magnification’

  • RELEASED: June 1997
  • FORMAT: 2xLP / CD
  • LABEL: NTONE
  • CAT No.: NTONE17 / NTONECD17
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY:  Paul Lewis / Riphead
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Riz had somehow got photos from CCTV footage inside a tube station foyer, I think she had a friend who worked in one maybe. She had even managed to get herself photographed in one of the images by standing around long enough in the camera’s line of sight.

The layout of the cover followed on from the 16 rectangles of the ‘Laundrophonic’ 12″ but included the title in the 16th box so as to have 15 images. On the tray I zoomed into one image that showed Riz over 15 levels but I think the title referred to observation in general rather than anything else hence the CCTV camera imagery.

Neotropic ‘Laundrophonic EP’

  • RELEASED: May 1997
  • FORMAT: 12″
  • LABEL: NTONE
  • CAT No.: NTONE18
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: Riz Maslen
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Taping sounds at the local laundry whilst doing her washing was the starting point for this EP and Riz photographed the machines whilst she was doing so. The original photos were colour but Ntone would only run to one colour on the sleeve art as the budgets were tiny (but full color labels?). The CD of the 15 Levels… album also featured some of them in colour.

DJ Vadim ‘Conquest of the Irrational’

  • RELEASED: May 1997
  • FORMAT: 12″/ CDS
  • LABEL: NINJA TUNE
  • CAT No.: ZEN1252 / ZENCDS52
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: unknown
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Taking it’s cue from the hot metal type tray on the ‘USSR Repertoire’, cover this sleeve featured a lot of actual letterpress stamps although I can’t remember where they came from or where they went. Vadim also had a picture of some steps he wanted included, hence the image on the cover. This was done largely on tour, using the computer at the new NInja office in Montreal and I was trying out Photoshop a little more than usual (woo! dynamically stretched letters!) Overdid it on the texture a bit and the CD disc is a diabolical mess but it took ages to line up all that text.

DJ Vadim ‘USSR Repertoire’

  • RELEASED: September 1996
  • FORMAT: 2xLP/CD
  • LABEL: NINJA TUNE
  • CAT No.: ZEN25 / ZENCD25
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: Nancy Brown
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Vadim’s first album proper and he let me do pretty much what I wanted. He liked the distressed look and was very much into recording different objects to use as concrete sounds within his productions. He bought some of these items round which Nancy Brown photographed and I then distressed by scratching and adding bleach to burn away parts of the images. At the time I was heavily into the comic collage work of Dave McKean and the graphics of Vaughn Oliver at V23 and elected to make a 3D construction using an old hot metal type tray I had acquired from college.

I had to scan the tray section by section and then knit it together in Photoshop which took an age as I was using a Mac LC475 which was ridiculously slow by today’s standards. I remember thinking I would never finish it on time as I was constantly waiting for the image to save back when Macs had bars running from left to right rather than spinning beach balls. We did it as a gatefold because the type tray image wrapped around the cover and we were heavily into jazz and classical sleeves at the time which used them a lot.

This artwork is now lost as the Syquest disc it was on corrupted and I didn’t have backup, the repro company didn’t keep …

Read more…

DJ Vadim ‘Aural Prostitution’

  • RELEASED: August 1996
  • FORMAT: 12″/CDS
  • LABEL: NINJA TUNE
  • CAT No.: ZEN1245 / ZENCDS45
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Not sure why I used pink and burgundy on this (not a very Hip Hop combination) but it was probably the title that swung it. A condom and a speaker – hmmmmm…. I like some of this but only parts of it.

DJ Vadim ‘Nonlateral Hypothesis’

  • RELEASED: June 1996
  • FORMAT: 12″
  • LABEL: NINJA TUNE
  • CAT No.: ZEN1240
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: Nancy Brown
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

When I first met Vadim he was in The Herbaliser’s Train Trax studios playing a record backwards with the disc suspended upside down on a roll of tape and this informed the cover image for this debut Ninja release. I was going for something abstract and vaguely jazz based but was deeply influenced by Vaughn Oliver and Chris Bigg’s work at V23 (lots of images in boxes, texture, script typefaces etc.) I’ve included the colours on the the original designs, lighter because my monitor wasn’t calibrated (see also ‘Trumpet Riffs’) but I actually like the darker printed version better.

The Herbaliser ‘Blow Your Headphones’

Die cut LP cover
LP labels
inner sleeve image
CD on body
LP back cover
  • RELEASED: Mar 1997
  • FORMAT: 2xLP / CD
  • LABEL: NINJA TUNE
  • CAT No.: ZEN28 / ZENCD28
  • DESIGN: Openmind / Ollie Teeba
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: Nancy Brown (flames) / Suzi Green (band)
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

At a sound check somewhere in Europe in the mid 90’s, Ollie Teeba and I were messing about with a mixer. Ollie went to turn up the gain on the monitoring and I quickly stopped him as I knew the output was very loud – “don’t do that, you’ll blow your headphones”. He liked the play on the classic JB’s ‘Blow Your Head’ and it became the next album title with a skull, fire and headphones cover image. Somewhere along the line we decided to do a die cut front, probably because Mo Wax were upping the stakes with packaging all the time and we were trying to compete.

I’m not sure what the burning film reel on the inner sleeve was for although there are film images throughout and I think Ollie wanted to allude to film titles on some of it, l can’t remember. I do remember pouring lighter fluid on the pile of film and it going up really quick with Nancy having to scrabble around quickly to get some shots whilst I looked for something to put it out. See the cover of ‘The Blend’ for the aftermath of that particular episode.

The Herbaliser ‘New & Improved’

T-shirt tag from around the same time period
  • RELEASED: Feb 1997
  • FORMAT: 12″ / CDS
  • LABEL: NINJA TUNE
  • CAT No.: ZEN1251 / ZENCDS51
  • DESIGN: Openmind / Ollie Teeba
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

I like the cover of this for it’s simplicity and it marks the debut of the cracked Herbaliser band logo that, to me, is the definitive one. It was started on the previous 12″, ‘Mr DJ’, but was just straight type with cracks and because the capital T and H weighted the letters heavily to the left I stretched them out for the next single. A 35mm film strip was also stretched across the cover to look a bit like the Cinemascope logo which works well with the new lettering. The rest of it is a right old mess though! See also here the first Herbaliser shirt design (from the Mr DJ’ cover) and the small screen printed tag which also featured.

Various Artists ‘Ninja Cuts – Flexistentialism’

inside gatefold
double cassette
double cassette back
double cassette inside
A2 promo poster
  • RELEASED: March 1996
  • FORMAT: 3xLP / 2xCD
  • LABEL: NINJA TUNE
  • CAT No.: ZEN22 / ZENCD22
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: Nancy Brown
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

This one worked out a little better than the previous Ninja Cuts comp and the idea was to expand the turntables idea from two to four as both Coldcut and Food had become known for this in the clubs in the intervening time. Also there was a budget for full colour this time round and a gatefold as it was a triple album. Nancy Brown and I shot a series of images in the Ahead of Our Time studios (during the time just after we had recorded ‘Journeys By DJ‘ I think) and shot some tasteful images of mixer details, effects pedals and tonearms etc.

The deck montage on the cover was put together from a series of different shots to form a ring of turntables and my Mac couldn’t handle the size of the photos at all so I had to bring the quality down, hence the weird quality of the image. More successful was the back cover with the cutting board background (ninja cuts – geddit?) I really like the labels on this one and the CD on bodies were full colour too which was later changed because it was expensive.

DJ Food ‘Refried Food’ vols. 1-6 + Lunchbox

  • RELEASED: Feb 1996 / Feb 2002
  • FORMAT: 2×12″ / 2×12″ + Lunchbox / CD / 2xCD
  • LABEL: NINJA TUNE
  • CAT No.: ZEN21/1&2 / ZEN21/3&4 / ZEN21/5&6 / ZENCD21 / ZENCD21US
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: Openmind
  • SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Limited numbers of vols. 5&6 come with a ‘Lunchbox’ to house all 6 volumes
  • EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Most people associate this with the row of LP spines that I put on the back cover and inside CD tray – many people have picked out certain records that they spotted in there that meant something to them. I’m not sure what I was thinking with this release but it’s based around records, mailers and the infamous ‘Save The Vinyl’ logo. The 12″ double packs came in 3 different colours – yellow, orange and burgundy – with the same artwork save for the colour code and text of which mix was on the volume.

It’s kind of a mess to look at now and I probably rushed it without fully thinking it through but hey – it does the job and a lot of people remember this release with a lot of affection. This is probably the DJ Food record most people in London would associate with the Stealth nights at the Blue Note from ’95 to ’97 as it is packed full of great mixes, a rarity for remix albums these days.