Ninja Tune

Album Review: DJ Kentaro / ‘Contrast’ (Ninja Tune)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

★★★☆☆

A turntablist turned dubstep detontator, seduced by gigantic wobbles being able to hit the big time, DJ Kentaro’s kitchen sink mentality is a mere half-hour long, the development of stylus wrecker to Japanese exocet having him breathe fire and running the city into a fever. The cut and dice never leaves him, intelligently worked into “Crossfader” and electro-funk ease-up “Next Page,” and there’s more than enough hip-hop firepower — DJ Krush, D-Styles, Kid Koala, C2C — to bill Contrast as a purely multi-deck throwdown. “Kikkake” and “Higher” however immediately state his intentions to push the plunger down on billowing, chaos-in-Metropolis, midrange dubstep/drumstep, made for snapping stadiums into a state of smithereens. State of the art for sure, even if it’s following a fast becoming long tradition – massive sounding, but in reality engineered spotlessly.

UK mega-mouths Foreign Beggars are the perfect power boosters for “Step In”, and the same goes for ragga runners of de dance MC Zulu on “Big Timer” and Fire Ball on “Fire Is On”, turning what was already a demolition job into a game of wrecking balls playing dodgeball. You’re actually getting your money’s worth out of 30 minutes – too much more would’ve been overload, such is Kenatro’s unflinching bass/synth bloodlust that will estrange those wanting an exhibition of crabs and juggles, but will get a helluva lot more of the market onside.
File under: Drumsound &amp Bassline Smith, Pendulum, Sub Focus

Buy Kid Koala’s ’12 Bit Blues,” Get A Cardboard, Hand Powered Turntable Kit

Darren Ressler Leave a Comment

Known for his sublime beatscapes, graphic novels and comics, Canadaian turntablist Kid Koala takes his creativity to the next level with his upcoming album, 12 Bit Blues. Now get this: the album’s limited edition first run will come with a cardboard, hand powered turntable kit. Are you reading this, Gizmodo?

Equally as interesting is that Koala (a.k.a Eric San) forged all of the album’s tracks on an old school E-mu SP-1200 sampler, a production unit he fantasized about owning when he was a kid. According to Ninja Tune, “over three days he cut up and reassembled the bed tracks for 12 Bit Blues. No sequencing software was used. Using the pads on the machine and a multitrack, Eric played each part of the tracks in real time, before finally returning and adding cuts over the top.”

So it’s no surprise 12 Bit Blues apparently sounds raw and beautiful. Look for the album dropping on September 18.

Album Review: Slugabed / ‘Time Team’ (Ninja Tune)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

★★★★☆

Greg Feldwick has cleaned his act up, kind of literally. Having started making dents in playlists and skulls with glitchy bass backfires and pixel-pocked electro, the Bath, England-based producer has steadily developed a sound of greater sparkle, allowing for an easier flow down the ear canal. In the throes of bass music engineering entrancement at the other end of the sound bed, his debut album is of clear visions, softer focussd projections (with room for the heartbreaking, “Sex” elevates to the spiritual from the assumed physical) and positive tingles of ambition that prompt gratification.

Time Team paints the future as imposing, but not as something to be feared. “All This Time” is enchanting, spearheading a quartz-anchored cruise passing electro calculator funk (“Travel Sweets,” “Grandma Paints Nice”), imperial encounters (“Dragon Drums”) and halo-polishing rave (“Mountains Come Out of the Sky”). “Moonbeam Rider” is a momentary backstep toward Slugabed’s glitch-hop facing an end of level b-boy baddie, presented as a different, denser area to explore rather than the typical fantasy stumbling upon the wrong side of the tracks.

Joining those stepping into the synthesized hyperreal, Slugabed conceives an illuminating quest where the thrill ride is structured so you don’t miss a thing, and the hectic flashes of activity are delivered with precision mechanisms and basslines gulping at the 8-bit multiplications.
File under: Lone, Jam City, Rustie

Album Review: Blockhead / ‘Interludes After Midnight’ (Ninja Tune)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

★★★☆☆

Tony Simon drops off instrumentalism back to when trip-hop was a misunderstood. Sometimes this is all you want — the prophetic title does mean that at least Blockhead makes for decent bedtime listening, stirring in nice folk/ethnic/nursery flavors, as on “Panic in Funkytown,” in the vein of last album The Music Scene. The best results lie in the trippier and tranquilizing tracks with more of a game plan to slip away into the night. “Hungover Like Whoa” is like a cooling sponge scraping across a needy forehead, with “Midnight Blue” explicitly miserable.

Sticking to a beats-as-beats theory, a smoker’s or advertiser’s delight, makes a fifth album disappointingly stubborn from a lauded producer. All Interludes After Midnight does is bring up the same old names from hip-hop-tinged collages from way back when. Rather than samples being designed by patchwork, everything is called from a queue after waiting its turn, and are part of an ever steady pace. It’s a reliable record if an unadventurous one, teasing you with what might have been, and though it can never be accused of being half-cocked (or even particularly flat-sounding), Blockhead emits an ambivalence leaning more towards the functional than the inspirational.
File under: RJD2, 2econd Class Citizen, DJ Krush