A 254 track journey through 20 Years of Ninja, Ntone, Big Dada and Counter, as only Dylan Richards knows how. Free download when you buy the Ninja Tune XX box set, standalone CD coming shortly after. This redefines the term ‘mix CD’ in a lot of ways.
Music
Sorry for the lousy, blurry photos, more soon as I get them
Back from holiday and ready to kick off the Ninja Tune 20th autumn in fine style. The array of gigs, press, releases and events is staggering, there are now 20 different things happening over the next two or so months and plenty of magazine coverage to come shortly. Be on the look out for a 6 page feature on rare Ninja releases in Record Collector, a 6 page design feature in Blueprint, a 70-odd page tribute issue of Trax magazine from France and an 8 page pull out supplement from Clash magazine amongst many more. The ’20 Years of Beats & Pieces’ book by Stevie Chick is now out, the exhibition in London is on until September 16th and the run of dates in France, organised by Ping Pong, start next Friday, the 10th, in Paris.
Djouls and Grant Phabao – the Paris DJs – have been doing some excellent podcast mixes of rare, remixed and psychedelic Ninja Tunes from the past two decades and have contributed to the Trax magazine articles too, find more info here.
There are gigs being set up in the US and Japan for late October and early November plus a huge line up for the Bristol show on November 13th. This weekend I’ll be doing three shows in Russia, one in St Petersburg and two in Moscow – the Migz festival and a special show after at the Dome Bar between 1 and 3am.
At some point in the next week. the box set should arrive at the Ninja office along with the six 12″s and there’s still a mix CD and DVD to come after that. Keep checking here for more info, shots of the packaging and related material…
Black Dog Publishing, 10a Acton St. London, WC1X 9NG
There’s a buzzer to the left, you get let in when you ring
3 years back I recorded a robot-themed mix for Solid Steel to coincide with the imminent release of the first Transformers film. I’d been meaning to do this for some time but this gave me the impetus and I crafted a little Transformers intro from various samples or tracks that sampled the robots in disguise. After that it’s mainly material from the 60’s and 70’s with that novelty look at robotics pre-Star Wars, what some would call ‘the golden age’.
I love this stuff, real oddity bin stuff, plenty of madcap psyche, dance craze records, vocoders and even a country ode to an electronic brain. A friend recently asked me to dig it out so here it is again.
Coming in September – Study Series 3 & 4
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I finally got my hands on the thing that consumed most of my waking hours for the first 6 months of this year today… the Ninja Tune book I slaved over. I was up at Black Dog Publishing sorting out some things for the forthcoming exhibition and a shipment arrived from Italy, soaking wet, with the card board split down the sides in some cases! Hilariously the delivery man placed them beneath a poster proclaiming “Properly packed parcels please” 
They only had one copy of the hardback edition which comes with the XX box set because all other copies are being routed to the factory where it is being put together but it is a beautiful thing to behold. Also in the pictures you can see some of the exhibits stacked up ready for the opening on the 20th. The paperback version should be in stores by the end or the month, 192 pages, priced £19.95, if you see one, have a flick through and find out what the label has been up to for the last two decades.
Yes! At last I can complete (sort of) my Ghost Box collection with the forthcoming reissue of their first release, now revised and on 10″ vinyl. There will also be a new edition of the CD and a download, all coming on September 10th. No tracklist yet but it’s great to know that GB are going to slowly reissue all their back catalogue on gorgeous vinyl, yeah I’m a sucker like that.
Opening in 2 weeks time will be Ninja’s first bonafide exhibition in the UK to celebrate the publication of the book, ‘Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats & Pieces’. Black Dog Publishing have generously offered to host a little showcase of the design and imagery that went into it and, after designing the book, the box set and all the paraphernalia that goes with it, I’m curating the exhibition too. It will feature lots of original artwork, models, posters, sleeves, flyers and promo bits from across the years.
It opens Friday, 20th of August at Black Dog’s gallery space, 10 Acton St. London, WC1X 9NG between 12-5pm weekdays and is only on for a month. There will be a special pop up shop on Saturday 11th September where there will be several special items for sale, hand picked from the Ninja archives as well as the new book.
We’re playing in a dome with 360 degree video, come and check us out, a few Ninja XX compilation exclusives in the set so far…
21.00- 21.15 Warm Up
21.15-22.45 JFB
22.45-23.45 DJ Woody Turntables In Technicolor
23.45-1 .15 am DJ Food & DK
1.15 – 2.45 am Hexstatic present Trailer Trax
2.45 – 4.00 am Sampology’s Super Visual Smackdown
The sold out MOOG T-shirt design I did earlier in the year is now back in stock at Chalk Brighton with a very limited repress of the Charcoal on Black original version. But adding to the range is a new off-white on white variant for the summer months – be quick, these sold out pretty fast first time round. Also check out their ‘SOUL’ shirt too.
Test mock up, not laminated, not foil blocked, shrinkwrapped etc…
These were out last week, Propaganda’s classic ‘A Secret Wish’ is now remastered and expanded to 2 CDs with plenty of rare and unheard gems. The Art of Noise get a double CD set too with a great compilation of both ZTT and China-era tracks on disc 1 and remixes, rareties and unreleased cuts on disc 2.
One of these is the ‘Anne to Tears’ version of Moments in Love that I photographed when I visited the ZTT vault last year and props to Ian Peel for doing a sterling job on curating both releases. Also a tip of the hat to Philip Marshall for his excellent design skills, keenly referencing the artwork by XL and the London Design Partnership from the originals – reissues don’t get much better than this. Even more of a joy for me is a mention of my ‘Raiding The 20th Century’ mix with Paul Morley in the sleeve notes of the Influence booklet Well I did steal it from Paul after he stole it from the Situationists. Buy them both from here
Great cover by Arth Daniels for the new DELS single ‘Shapeshift’ on Big Dada. The video is decent too
[youtube width=”655″ height=”455″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjAnmqecMKI[/youtube]