VARIOUS ARTISTS
You Don’t Know: Ninja Cuts
ZENCD150
Ninja Tune 2008
50 Tracks. 224mins35secs

Ninja Tune have been going for an awful long time. Eighteen years in fact. Back at the outset, deep in the mists of time, when we were quite a bit younger than we are now (if we existed at all, that is), the Ninja crew were a bunch of cool fuckers. They rode in on the backs of the likes of DJ Food, Coldcut, Hex and co. Soon after the founding fathers came a second wave consisting of 9 Lazy 9, Funki Porcini, DJ Vadim and The Herbaliser. The early compilations – Funkjazztical Tricknology, Tone Tales From Tomorrow – were a lot of fun and contributed to a playful rebalancing of the rather-too-serious for its own good self-definition of trip-hop by Bristolian headliners (you know who I mean).

Later in the nineties and early noughties, fascinating leftfield luminaries such as Burnt Friedman, Chris Bowden, Roots Manuva and Jaga Jazzist hopped on the bus. But somewhere along the way the main stable seemed to get a bit hackneyed, those waggish ‘you are listening to a stereo recording’-type samples began to bring listeners out in hives and the Ninja Tune share price plummeted.

Had enough of the history lesson? Knew it all already? Fair enough, but all that’s the background to this three CD release which represents something of a lifting up of the proverbial carpet to see what strange mould outgrowths and unlikely furballs have accumulated in the shadows over the years. This is Ninja Tune taking the opportunity to open up the hoover bag and tell an alternate, arguably more interesting history than the one you’ve just read above (sorry!)

So how about The Cinematic Orchestra, DJ Shadow, cLOUDDEAD, Wiley, Amon Tobin, Spank Rock, Mr Scruff, Daedelus, Ty, Diplo, Homelife, Ghislain Poirier, The Bug? Occasionally, the likes of NMS intoning ‘the government have programmed your brain, it’s a brave new world’ begin to pall, but then along comes Mike Ladd to raise the bar again with the aptly titled Blah Blah. Likewise, Cinematic Orchestra’s Rites Of Spring feels too much like a tokenistic ‘oh look we even do free jazz blowouts’, but the downturn is quickly salved by the rather lovely backwards vocals and strings of Max & Harvey’s Thieves. Over a gargantuan, exhausting and probably over-extended fifty tracks and three hours, forty four minutes and thirty five seconds, we get taught a lesson, the gist of which is – Ninja Tune are a lot more varied, less cuddly, harsher and more in-yer-face than you and your wonky memory might have come to believe. On the evidence of this I’m loathe to disagree.

3.5/5

Ninja Tune
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CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA
Ma Fleur
ZENCD122
Ninja Tune 2007
10 Tracks. 49mins08secs

The mid-late 90s produced a boom of acts deriving their sound from what could be called “jazz”. There were jazzy breaks, trip hop, nu-jazz, acid jazz. Swimming in this melee (and anchored on Ninja Tune, arguably the most quality label for this downtempo fix) were J. Swinscoe’s Cinematic Orchestra. After a minor splash with their debut, Motion, and an interesting fore into composing a new soundtrack for Dziga Vertov’s classic film, Man With A Movie Camera, the Orchestra released a bona-fide stunner with 2002’s Every Day. Featuring some truly soul-jarring vocals from the legendary Fontella Bass, in addition to what is possibly Roots Manuva’s finest performance to date on the introspective-without-getting-corny-or-preachy All Things To All Men, it was a direct hit to all those who claimed that such nu-jazz genres were derivative nostalgia with nowhere left to go.

So, now, five years on, Cinematic Orchestra returns with an epic hush with Ma Fleur. Conceived as a soundtrack to a film that does not exist (yet?), it features a melancholy hero portrayed by various singers, including the brilliant-as-always Bass. While Every Day relied more heavily on 21^st-century musics, including synthesizers, cut up drums and vocals, and trip-hoppy bass lines, Ma Fleur is a much more restrained work. Plucked acoustic guitars, gentle strings, and slowly disarming vocals are front-and-center here; a headphone album if ever there was one. If Every Day was the chaotic sounds of an exhausted life, Ma Fleur is a weekend retreat to reconnoiter in the countryside.

There’s beauty abound here. It’s obvious that Swinscoe and co. have spent a great deal of time on these songs, making each one a mini-story in its own. This also presents an issue, as every song feels like either an epic, or a brief segue. Of course, epics are the forte of Cinematic Orchestra, making their abundance hardly a surprise. Beats are scarce, and often appear solely to drive home a theme – as in the final third of the stunning album highlight, Time And Space. Elsewhere, the absence of beats establishes overtures (Prelude) and more personal, heartfelt, lyrical recollections (That Home). On the other end of the spectrum, the ebbing bass-keys interplay of Familiar Ground and As The Stars Fall is a perfect cousin to Every Day’s chugging Burnout.

If anything, one’s major complaint with Ma Fleur could be that, at points, it’s just too much beauty. It’s a perfect album for late nights, and for contemplative, withdrawn moments. Absent is the broken beat frenzy of the past – in sticking to a theme, the Orchestra does not break from a melancholic mood, alternating between hope and desperation. Only As The Stars Fall comes close to the chaos of such diced beat exercises as Flite, from Every Day. If the Orchestra must be sticking to a theme, however, it’s a rather rewarding one, and obviously very carefully planned out. As always, they seem to know how best to lay on devastatingly fragile vocals. Listening to Ma Fleur, one can’t help but wonder whether Swinscoe also has a script written up somewhere, never to be released, to keep the cohesive whole together. At times, it’s a meandering overdose of epic beauty, but it’s gorgeous nonetheless.

3.5/5

Explore: Cinematic Orchestra | Ninja Tune
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