Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2010

Courtesy of Beatink

It was a trip to Japan that got the ball rolling. Matt Black and Jonathan More, the brains behind production duo Coldcut, were riding on a string of UK Top 20 hits when they came on tour here with Beats International at the turn of the ’90s. But their status as major label darlings was already beginning to chafe. Japan, in all its idiosyncratic splendor, convinced them that there might be another way of doing things.

The result was independent record label Ninja Tune, which this year celebrates 20 years in the business. Though it’s now synonymous with a wide swathe of leftfield music, from Amon Tobin’s dense electronica and The Bug’s bowel-shaking dancehall to the jazz-inflected excursions of The Cinematic Orchestra and Bonobo, the imprint started off as a convenient outlet for Coldcut’s more wayward impulses. Contractual obligations initially prevented them from releasing music elsewhere under their own name, so they concocted a string of aliases for Ninja, including Bogus Order and DJ Food.

“A lot of the pseudonyms were just down to whatever music came out,” recalls Kevin “Strictly Kev” Foakes, who has been involved with the label since 1994. “‘What does that sound like? Oh, that doesn’t sound like a Coldcut track or a Food track. We’ll call it something else, like Hex or, I don’t know…’ The Illuminati of Headfuk was one.”

Much as superheroes pass their mantles on from time to time, Black and More eventually bequeathed the DJ Food moniker to Foakes and Patrick “PC” Carpenter. However, Foakes had originally been employed at the label for his visual rather than musical talents: working under the name Openmind, he designed the distinctive record-wielding ninja logo that adorns each release, and created artwork for the majority of Ninja Tune’s output.

When it came to whipping together a 20th anniversary box set, he was the man for the job. And what a box set it is: Ninja Tune XX weighs in at 3.5kg, including six CDs and six 7” singles, alongside a hardback book that chronicles the label’s history. “You’re not getting any minimalist experience—it’s all there for you to wallow in,” Foakes says over a cup of tea at the Ninja Tune HQ in London. “It’s literally this year’s work—it’s all I’ve done. I think I’ve made two tracks this year. I’ve done DJ gigs and stuff, but the rest of the time’s been spent solidly on that.”

Roughly this time last year, of course, the world was celebrating the 20th birthday of another pioneering UK independent, Warp Records, which released a lavish set of its own to mark the occasion. “It was a benchmark,” admits Foakes. “One of the things I felt that we had to do was, that was the thing to beat…

“Warp is definitely always someone to look at, and take inspiration from as well, because they’re the nearest thing we’ve got in terms of a sort of ri—” He catches himself. “Rival’s the wrong word, but they do their thing and we do our thing, and it’s not that far apart. Sometimes it crosses over a lot.”

With the box now out of the way, he hopes to get back to making tunes. The last DJ Food album proper was 2000’s genre-flouting Kaleidoscope, after which Carpenter left to join The Cinematic Orchestra. Foakes has released a number of mixes since then—including the brain-expanding “Raiding the 20th Century,” which attempted to summarize the entire history of the cut-up in 40 minutes—but original productions have been less forthcoming.

“I was collecting stuff the whole time with a view to making a record, but my head wasn’t in making a record,” he says. “My head was in designing sleeves for Ninja, it was in making mixes and radio shows for Solid Steel, and that’s what I did exclusively for about five years in the early noughties. And in my opinion, I did some of my best work in both fields then.”

He returned to the studio last year with a pair of EPs, One Man’s Weird is Another Man’s World and The Shape of Things That Hum, part of an intended trilogy that had to be put on hold when Ninja Tune XX began to gobble up his working hours. “I’m not fast,” he says. “I can’t sit there and go brrrrr and knock up a beat in ten minutes.”

Maybe it’s just part of getting older, but he also finds himself at odds with many contemporary producers. “There’s the musicality—I’m finding the musicality with a lot of modern production just isn’t there,” he says. “A lot of producers seem to mistake software plug-ins and things like that for musicality… It’s like, ‘How can I make this bassline even gnarlier and grittier and crazier than yours?’ But in the end, it doesn’t end up being musical or memorable—it’s just noise. It’s sonics: it’s sonic warfare, basically.”

After an autumn that’s seen him spin at birthday parties in London, New York, Paris and Berlin, DJ Food will be heading to Tokyo on November 5, when he plays at the second of two Ninja-themed bashes at Shibuya O-East, alongside regular cohort DK. I mention that I pulled a muscle in my back while dancing to his set the last time he was here, and he looks mortified.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “That was quite a mad weekend.”

“Ninja Tune XX Tokyo (Evening Edition)” (The Qemists, DJ Kentaro and more) and “Ninja Tune XX Tokyo (Night Edition)” (Coldcut, DJ Food & DK, Roots Manuva with Toddla T and more). Nov 5. Shibuya O-East. Timetables and more info available at Beatink.