Wed March 24, Showbox, 9 pm, $15 adv.
By the mid-'80s, the pop charts in the United Kingdom had started absorbing hiphop music. For example, Public Enemy's second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, reached the top 10 in 1988, as well as Eric B. & Rakim's hardcore "Follow the Leader." More amazing still, hiphop futurist Mantronix was a hit-making machine in the UK, yet almost unknown in America outside of New York City. Although the UK recognized the beauty and value of hiphop very early in its career, the country didn't formulate an adequate or convincing response to it until the beginning of the '90s, with the rise of the Bristol scene and the arrival of the labels Shadow Records and Ninja Tune.
The British crews that were played on Tim Westwood's tastemaking show on BBC radio in the '80s were certainly in the business of making hiphop, but none seemed to offer authentic products. If the rappers sounded American, as was the case with the Cookie Crew, then they were merely mimicking real hiphop; if they sounded British, as with the Demon Boys, they sounded awkward. Unlike the French, the British were exposed to the fact that they didn't speak black American English, which expressed a totally different reality from that which Jamaican or London accents expressed. Many of the early artists on Ninja Tune (Herbaliser, 9 Lazy 9, Funki Porcini) resolved this problem by removing the troublesome rapper and focusing on the production of hiphop music.
As the current ZENtertainment Tour makes evident, Ninja Tune is still alive today, long after the fall of what came to be called triphop and the rise of new forms of DJ music that are not hiphop-based. Indeed, the label has adjusted very well in the new millennium. Not abandoning hiphop altogether, since the late '90s Ninja Tune has been releasing CDs by a steady stream of artists who make music with beats set against or within very moody atmospheres. The wonderful Cinematic Orchestra is the best example of this present progression away from hiphop abstractions and toward the production of pure sonic textures that utilize beats from a variety of cultural currents--bossa nova, jazz, and soul.
The ZENtertainment Tour contains elements from Ninja Tune's triphop past and its atmospheric future. Representing the label's early catalog, there is Amon Tobin and Kid Koala, both of whom were signed in the mid-'90s and are recognized as being exceptionally inventive, which was not the case with many of the DJs who benefited from the triphop boom. Tobin is more a producer than DJ, whose last CD, Out from Out Where, was ambitious and drunk with new concepts that presented a constellation of possible futures not only for himself but also in many ways for his label. Kid Koala, on the other hand, is less a producer than a genius DJ/turntablist, whose CD Carpal Tunnel Syndrome was made completely on the turntables.
Of the two new cats (or New Ninjas) on the tour, the most recognizable is Blockhead, who has made his mark as a hiphop producer. Aesop Rock, Slug of Atmosphere, and Mike Ladd, to name a few, have all worked with Blockhead, and it's by no means an exaggeration to say that he is to underground hiphop what the Neptunes are to pop rap. Blockhead is that influential and productive. His debut CD, Music by Cavelight, which comes out on March 23, is, however, barely related to the music he made for Aesop Rock and others, but instead closer to the kind of music Ninja Tune has focused on lately--moody atmospheres that are projected onto a variety of global grooves. Music by Cavelight is a work of jazz-beauty, and is heavy with the sad emotions.
It's impressive that the future is so wide open for Ninja Tune, considering it could have easily folded when the fad of triphop came to a close at the end of the '90s. In a way, what the ZENtertainment Tour celebrates and effectively proves is that Ninja Tune has the ability to sign artists who are likely to last rather than evaporate when the air of their time is exhausted.
