Labels: Ninja Tune
Review by: Chris Bress
Not being the biggest fan of most of the Ninja Tune output I was pleasantly surprised on hearing just how good this big band are. I’ll be honest though, I had always skipped articles about them in magazines as I always presumed they were just breaks or trip hop and it wasn’t until the chap from the Mars Volta said how good they were in NME that I really decided to check them out.
Jaga Jazzist are great and they are like a big mix of Fourtet, Miles Davis, Him, Tortoise, Squarepusher and Prefuse 73. The first two tracks on here are lovely, the first has a great guitar line and broken drum n bass lite beats all over it. The other two tracks are remixes by Matthew Herbert (another artist I have wanted to hear for ages) and Dat Politics. The first remix is so summery and nice, but its not just soft indie pap it’s proper BBQ on the roof, hanging out with your friends kind of music without being too easy on the ears. It has some stomping hip hop beats and crunches that will get you nodding along. The other remix is just silly, it’s a lot like Fourtet pissing around (which I wish he would) and the playful childish mess still sounds great.