Don’t stop this crazy thing
Ninja Tune XX traces Coldcut’s path through decades of sampledelia
Coldcut used to brag that it was “Ahead Of Our Time.†In the late 80s, they slapped the phrase onto a host of groundbreaking forays into cut-and-paste sound mathematics like “Beats + Pieces,†“Doctorin’ the House†and “Stop This Crazy Thing,†freewheeling tunes that treated the history of sound as an enormous candy shop, copyright laws be damned.
And now? Coldcut’s long-running company Ninja Tune reflects the musical times in all its heterogeneous sub-genres and variations on familiar themes. When Matt Black and Jonathan More launched Ninja Tune in 1990, it was to create an outlet for the group’s abiding passion in instrumental beats (which the British press would soon garnish with colorful nicknames like “trip-hop†and “sampledeliaâ€). It was built on Coldcut-related productions like DJ Food’s Jazz Brakes series and Bogus Order’s Zen Brakes. The label then flowered into a major-indie with two sub-labels (the rock and soul oriented Counter and the experimental hip-hop of Big Dada) and dozens of artists passing through its doors, from Amon Tobin and Roots Manuva to Antibalas and Mr. Scruff. It releases iconoclastic statements from the L.A. beat scene (Daedelus), the Baltimore indie/electro scene (Spank Rock and the Death Set) and London’s grime and bass worlds (Wiley and Kevin Martin’s the Bug).
