Sunday Night is all right for Ninja Tune.

Comments Off | Posted: August 13th, 2006 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Another Sunday night, another evening raiding You Tube and Google Video for fine content. Tonight’s music video selections are all from Ninja Tune or its related labels (Big Dada, N Tone, etc.)

The video for Roots Manuva’s “Witness The Fitness” is reason #218 that Rodney Smith is my favorite rapper.

Funki Porcini put out consistently good music that crosses genres from ambient to slow-motion jazz to fast, breaks-driven dance tracks. “Rockit Soul” falls in the last category, with some nods to sci-fi soundtracks of the 50s. Tons of archival space footage are stitched together lovingly.

“Kevin’s Pies Shop” is a major location in the charming and just-cute-enough video for “Sweetsmoke” by Mr. Scruff.

Animal on Wheels is one of those underappreciated Ninja Tune acts that always sneaks up on me. “Never In And Never Out” is just plain lovely and this low-rez version of the video does it no justice.

OK, there’s a giant Spider-Man story sample on “Giant Wall Crawling Monster Breaks” by Herbaliser. There, that ties it back into this site’s main focus. I win. (Again, neat use of public domain and government footage.)

Daedalus’s “Lights Out” is from the excellent Denies The Day’s Demise that has cover art by Winsor McKay. This is going to give me a truly obscene number of nightmares, I can tell.

Another Herbaliser video: “Something Wicked,” the almost-title track from their 2002 album Something Wicked This Way Comes.. Great vocal from Seaming To and the horns on this track make me terribly happy. Somebody who has control over these things really should license as the opening theme to some detective show.

My favorite Ninja Tune act is The Cinematic Orchestra. Sadly, the footage I’ve found of their blindingly good live performance at the Montreaux Jazz Festival is out of sync with Fontella Bass singing with her mouth closed. Happily, the promotional clip for “All That You Give,” which also features the splendid Fontella Bass, is available.

Finally, here’s Matt Black and Jonathan Moore of Coldcut talking a bit about their working method.

---