As an average punter, I relish the Ninja Cuts series. Ninja Tunes, with its offshoots Big Dada and Counter, is such a huge label with so many different and great artists, it’s impossible to keep up with all of them, unless you’re loaded or can claim records back on tax. This latest release “You Don’t Know” features 50 tunes from the broadest range of Ninja Tune Artists yet, exposing the listener to not only to sounds of the labels’ past, but to its future as well.
Some awesome hiphop graces the album, like Spank Rock, DJ Shadow and RJD2, artists who have done extremely well on other labels. Kentaro features twice on the album, joining Kid Koala as a new resident ninja turntablist. Mike Ladd’s early track Blah Blah Blah is an awesome addition to any hiphop library, as is Brave New World by NMS. The Heavy brings to mind Curtis Mayfield with their track Colleen, one of my favourite tunes across the 3 disc set.
New genre’s are also represented, as Wiley’s No Qualms revox and Mode Selector’s remix of Blazin’ by Ghislain Poirer join The Bug in representing grime slash dubstep sounds. But then then there’s the almost token “weird stuff”. Fink’s Pretty Little Thing and John Matthias’ Evermore are folk-rock tunes, reminiscent of John Butler or Jeff Buckley. Max & Harvey’s Thieves is a bizarre little tune with all the vocals backwards. Clouddead’s Physics of a Unicycle borders on psychopathic, and Homelife’s Seedpod sounds like Salsa music having a fight with a Loony Toons cartoon.
Of course, the album has the names you expect – Coldcut, Cinematic Orchestra, the Herbaliser, Mr Scruff, Amon Tobin, Hexstatic, Bonobo and Roots Manuva. Interestingly though, most of these artists are unreleased tunes or remixes. Hexstatic’s Distorted Minds from their underwhelming When Robots Attack, get the remix treatment from Zero DB, turning it into a grimy dnb track. Coldcut’s wonderful Walk A Mile In My Shoes has the soul sucked out of it by Tiga, who turns it into a groovy yet stark techno track. Susumu Yokota’s minimalist take on The Cinematic Orchestra is sublime. And the Qemist’s remix of Coldcut’s Atomic Moog 2000 turns the already great track into a massive drum and bass dancefloor stomper.
There is much more to this album, but to put it simply this is how compilations should be done. I didn’t like Fink’s album, but I’m going to re-listen to it after hearing the track on here. I don’t usually like Tiga’s take on techno, but I like this remix. I like dnb, and I love the Qemist’s remix of Atomic Moog. You Don’t Know: Ninja Cuts is so much more than simply a “greatest hits” or “best of”, and features such a wide range of music, some of it old, some of it unreleased, and so much of it unexpectedly fantastic that anyone who’s into quality music is sure to get something from getting this compilation.