NEW LOCATION!

If you've been wondering why there haven't been any new posts, they are located at our new site : http://ninjatronics.net . All the social network links are up to date, but we will keep this site up as a reference of our previous work ... and eternal internet graveyard site.

NINJATRONICS - new website locale

Hey friends,

The Ninjatronics Crew is busy getting the new website up, take a look at what we're up to in the meantime!

http://ninjatronics.tumblr.com

change yr bookmarks - - - soon to be http://ninjatronics.net

Missing In Action

The Ninjatronics Collective has been busy!

o o o We are currently working on a new direction for the ' .com ' website o o o

Our events on the sidebar will be up in the meantimessss. Thanks for keeping up with the site, we're trying to make it better and find a way to post about our current/personal projects.

Junk Culture - West Coast

Another random find, Junk Culture also known as Deepak Mantena hails from Oxford, Mississippii. Recently signed onto the Illegal Art label (Girl Talk mantras), Junk Culture is scheduled for an LP release coming out on October 27th.

Very similar to the likes of Javelin, Junk Culture's looptic and sampling style fits right into the Illegal Art label.

The lo-fi ness comes from the widely used hand held sound catcher via tape recorder , making me feel real good about having bought a $2 tape recorder yesterday at UNCW's surplus sale. Hail yah.

According to Luxury Wafer's exclusive - Junk Culture's live show isn't your average beejay kinda of an electronic show. With appearances from Deepak's sibilings, to include his younger brother, Nitin on drums - with a bandesque feel performing live percussion beats along with Deepak's vocals to a series of film clips/visuals looping in the distancia .


Sample for yrselfahhhh, supah freshnas.

Junk Culture - West Coast

Catch Junk Culture w/Girl Talk on these upcoming dates:

9/18 – Showbox Sodo – Seattle, WA
9/19 – Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver
9/19 – Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver
9/21 – Showbox at the Market – Seattle, WA

Karl Hector and the Malcouns

Karl Hector & the Malcouns are a ten piece group of musicians including Funk Pilots leader Karl Hector and Jay Whitefield (guitarist for the Whitefield Brothers and the Poets of Rhythm), and Malcouns founders Zdenko Curlija (drums, percussion, bass and vocals) and Thomas Myland (organ & bass). The band also includes Bo Baral on percussion, Wolfi Schick, ( sax, flute and bass clarinet), Ben Abarbanel-Wolff (tenor, baritone sax) and Stu Krause (trumpet, valve trombone). Recorded in Germany, there is a world of music to be discovered on their album Sahara Swing, on Now-Again Records/Stones Throw.

Just a little sticker on their vinyl set, describing their music as "Afrodelic Kraut Funk" ...it's like taking a safari ride , redefining the concept of fusion between experimental jabs of jazz with earthy elements of hip hop infused Afro-funk. Great for loungey listening times ... reminds me of another favorite The Budos Band. . . creating that mysterious, smokey vibe that eases you into a comax.

Azeda Booth - Tubtrek EP

Azeda Booth was a nice little surprise via lastfm, I stumbled upon a music video of their song Big Fist a while back from their previous album In Flesh Tones [released by Absolutely Kosher, 2008] that was directed by Jordan Easton. Little did I know at the time that they were indeed the voices of Morgan and Jordon, the wispy [now] unmistakable androgynous vocals.



Us Ninjatrons were listening to their new Tubtrek EP today and agree that the from the new songs we like Samoan Girls and from the remixes Well (Refilled and Set in Sand remix) and v remix of Big Fist - although this is a pretty solid EP otherwise!

Hailing from Calgary, Azeda Booth originally formed back in 2004 and was the project of Morgan Greenwood & Jordon Hossack. They remained a duo until the year 2006 when Chris Reimer, Marc Rimmer and Mike Wallace joined, becoming the now quintetessenial 5 star hotel , give me a high FIVE NOW! which came to release the full length In Flesh Tones. The last bit of work that Morgan and Jordan put together was the release of 2007's Mysterious Body. According to their website, it looks like Azeda Booth is now Morgan, Jordan and Marc.

The latest to come is their Tubtrek EP The FREE DOWNLOAD is available at http://www.azedabooth.com/ep/ .

Here's a free download of their track Ran from their previous album In Flesh Tones.

The Woods - The Final Breaths of a Main Character

Our fellow amigos The Woods from Tallahassee, FL have been getting busy with music and video making (I is proud of yous!). The official release of "The Final Breathes of a Main Character" is creating a BUZZ with their new [EP] The EP Logue. This is the first music video from The Woods singer Ian Dudley, being trapped in a nautical world of his own imagination. Lets all go sailing on beds and make some ocean friends!

The acoustic/experimental/folk artista Ian Dudley released his self/titled project back in 2008 , with 40 handmade DIY CD book encasings (WVFS got one!) that took 11 days to record under Plug Research. The wide release of his official first album - A Bird That Cannot Fly was distributed via the tiny Living with Ghost Records imprint. Definitely check out the previous album - which was recorded as a lo-fi project with friends to help Ian's storytelling come to life. This music video was part of the WondersTV internet sensation . . . directed by Raul B. Fernandez : A WONDERS PRODUCTION!


The Woods was also featured on All Things Considered back in the day, check out the NPR review here.




The digital release for the EP Logue is free!

Pointer Sisters Rewind

The fabulous Pointer Sisters - often found on any funk/soul radio station, were doing it right in the 70s/80s with their impeccable sense of style and grooves. The original gang - Ruth , Anita, June and Boonie Pointer (formed in Oakland)- scored their pop 'n soul hits (featured above) embodying funky rhythms and motownish hollatcha girl attitude.

If you ever were watching Seasame Skkkreet back in the day, then ya'll know that sticky tune on the pinball countdown that looped in your head was sung by the Pointer Sisters.
The "Pinball Number Count" began appearing on Sesame Street in 1976. The music was composed by Walt Kraemer who also scored and provided voices or the Star Wars parody Hardware Wars, working on the George Lucas animated feature Twice Upon a Time.

The pinball animation was directed by Jeff Hale who produced many inserts for Sesame Street including the Typewriter, and Ringmaster series. He also is the founder of the San Francisco-based animation studio Imagination, INC.

To see the fullerrrrr version of the countdown click here.

Hot Chip - One Pure Thought

So our friends Hot Chip are beat heaveaaaan returning with their new[ish] single 'One Pure Thought' which was issued back in early May, taken from the massively acclaimed album 'Made in the Dark' released earlier this year. This music video has been rocking my summer pants so hard.

It was directed by Sheffield Hallam University Alumnis Bevis Martin & Charlie Youle and produced by TRUNK Animation Ltd. (based out of the UK). You should definitely check out Trunk's website for more short film/animations like The Dog Who Was a Cat Inside.

Ninjatronics Events!

The Ninjatronics family has been weaned on the idea of community involvement, performance, and contribution to the well being of the artistic and creative realm. With this in mind, we're pleased to announce the Ninjatronics Events section, which will provide information as to what all us Ninjatrons are up to as of late. This post will serve as a permalink for the events column (listed at right) and will be kept updated with everrrthang we've been doing.

::Likkkkkkkeeeee::



Ninjatronics is now the official host of the East Coast Opera House Open Mic night here in Wilmington, NC!! The new but already well-established [AS AWESOME] artsy-dive bar East Coast Opera House has been a Ninjatronics favorite since its inception -- it's by far the best place in Wilmington to meet progressive, creative-minded people from all walks of life.

Starting June 18th, every Thursday at 9PM we'll be hosting a variety of local musicians (solo acts and bands) who'll be sharing their works whilst jamming with others to network and create a better musical community. Signup is by 8:30PM so come early, support your city, and make new connections!

The open mic is ALWAYS free and always guaranteed to be a good time. So come out, meet some of us, see what Wilmington's underground music scene has to offer, and stay connected!

Ninjatronics Events:

Aug. 20th - Open Mic/Jam Hosted by Ninjatronics @ East Coast Opera House 9PM
119 Grace St, Wilmington NC

Aug. 21st - Photo Show @ the Parallelogram, DJ Teknacolorninja & Visuals Jordan - 526 S. 3rd St, Wilmington, NC



Aug. 27th - Open Mic/Jam Hosted by Ninjatronics @ East Coast Opera House 9PM
119 Grace St, Wilmington NC

Aug. 29th - Midtown Lounge Series: SWOMP Party feat. Teknacolorninja & Visuals by Jordan 10PM - Mellow Mushroom 4311 Oleander Dr. Wilmington, NC


Sept. 2nd - The BASSMGMT Series feat. beats 'n visuals from Ninjatronics & Project Getdown 10PM - 255 N. Front St, Wilmington , NC (FB, Myspace)



Sept. 4th - Body Parts Art Exhibit Feat. Dance After Party w/ Teknacolorninja

7-PM 526 S. 3rd St, Wilmington, NC

Sept. 5th-6th - BE YR OWN HERO FEST 2009- featuring bands from all over the Southeastern board.

Shows: The Soapbox, 225 N. Front St. Wilmington , NC
Workshops: 5th 'n Wooster , Wilmington, NC

I Met the Walrus

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan (Toronto,CA) snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon's "bed-in" phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative - transforming Lennon’s anti-war stance into a cascading flood of multipronged animation.

Raskin marries traditional pen sketches by James Braithwaite with digital illustration by Alex Kurina (only non J related individual in the project!). I Met the Walrus was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short along with Best Animated Short award from the AFI Fest, Middle East International Film Festival, Manhattan Short FF, Cleveland International FFm, RiverRun International FF.

BIKE HYPE !!! JUNE 7TH, 2009

!!!!Bike Hype!!!! is this weekend ::June 7, 2009:: at Jengo's Playhouse (815 Princess St). This is an all-day bike fest and FUNraiser for Hero Fest 2009 and the Wilmington Bike Recyclery. So all you southEAST bound folks come show your bikeLOVE as there will be an alley cat, a screening of VEER followed by Bike Prom! There are tons of cool prizes you can win for just being a bikeHEAD...show up with your bikeOUT as there will be entertainment from our friends Coup de Grace followed by dance party featuring Teknacolorninja (from Ninjatronics)! Don't forget to check out the Really Really Free Market/Food Not Bombs which has been relocated from 4th and Castle temporarily to JENGOS PLAYHOUSE this Sunday!

Here's the VEER trailer and more info about the upcoming Be Yr Own Hero FEST 2009.

PSST! 3 Pass It On - Burial Sugar Live

Burial Sugar Live from PSST! on Vimeo.

The short film BURIAL SUGAR LIVE was created for the PSST! 3 Pass It On animation collaboration which is a series of short animated films created in collaboration by a select group of motion graphics artists from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Berlin. The collaborative film project has 17 films made by 51 teams of Designers, Directors, Animators and Composers. You can see more films at their Vimeo site.

The film BURIAL SUGAR LIVE was just one of the films featured in the group, as credited in three parts with an amazing cast of animators/composers:

Part 1: Burial

Design and Animation:
Bran Dougherty-Johnson
Curated and conceived the PSST! Pass It On series.

Music by:
Joel Pickard (Portland, OR)
Has an MA in Composition from Mills College in Oakland, CA where he studied with Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, and Pauline Oliveros. He has a BA in Music from Bethel College in St. Paul, MN where he studied classical guitar.

Part 2: Sugar

Story, Design and Animation:
Rex Crowle (London)
"I took the final frame of his film and continued its themes but in my own little animated world of a teenage girls coming-of-age in a Victorian tea-shop." See the clip here.

Music & Audio:
David Kamphatfarm
After playing in bands, deejaying and getting a bachelor in composition at Folkwang Hochschule, he started freelancing for different music production companies, including Adelphoimusic London/Berlin.

Voice:
Emily Newton Dunn (London)
She's got a knack for video games as a producer/designer at Electronic Arts, whilst in the past was a TV presenter for the UK-based show "Bits", a show about gaming.

Part 3: Live

By: Bran Dougherty-Johnson
"Someone dropped out, so I ended up doing both Part 1 and Part 3. I think it worked out, though. I liked answering Rex’s section with my ending."

iamxl

iamxl, aka Jon Hamlin, is an old familiar artist that I recently re-discovered lurking in the tattered remnants of my "Random Music" folder from years past. I have no idea where these songs of his I have came from, but they piqued my interest enough to do a little e-digging and figure out who exactly iamxl is. Working mainly in Vancouver (Canada!) and London (UK!), Jon's apparently been DJing, producing, and consistently pumping out all sorts of mismatched and danceable remixes for more than ten years.

Sometimes relaxed and sometimes housetastic, he's mixed and mashed everything from Ice-T to Joy Division to even Sook-Yin Lee, the woman fondly known to us at Ninjatronics as the awesome sex therapist in the movie Shortbus (definitely worth checking out if you're prepared for some extremely explicit content.) These songs may not be club bangers, but they'll certainly keep things moving mid-set.

Also, for more on Sook-Yin, check out her music myspace here. I didn't know she made music at all, so it's pretty cool to rummage through her stuff.

My Tiger My Timing - This Is Not My Fire

Formed in south east London in early 2008 by siblings James Vincent and Anna Vincent, Jamie Harrison and Gary Drain, this four-piece outfit creates electrobodi rhythms and with vocal heavy melodies to create their "hypnotic dark pop music". The debut single by was produced by Andy Spence of New Young Pony Club, Freakniks and Organic Audio. You can tell why they made a good fit with similar danceable backgrounds. I particularly like the plena-like kick found in bands like Vampire Weekend...or a lil Panamanian infused plena/reggaeton.

The music video was directed by Ian William Galloway, who has has designed throughout the UK, Europe and America, creating visuals, projections, films and graphics for theatre, opera, dance, live music and fashion shows. He studied at Rose Bruford and currently lives in East London.

In Bb- a collaborative music project

If you have a spare half-hour or two, check out In Bb.

I could describe it to you, but it's something that you should really experience for yourself. Very melodic and peaceful.

And you ninjaflowers (yes, ninjaflowers. That's what you all are) should contribute. I'm going to go work on something for it now.

Monster Zoku Onsomb - Tinker

Nos amies over in France (Sourire Collective) dropped us a nice little psychotronic visual by the group Monster Zoku Onsomb. Hailing from the Brisbane/Queenland area, these Aussies like to sample all sounds, from rockabilly to ragga, drum 'n bass , electro and experimental.

You can check out their Remix Project 2009 for more tracks and sounds of late as they'll be at the upcoming electronica/dance stitch in Winchester, Hampshire's Glade Festival this July 16-19th!

We've be a lil busy setting up thangs for the summer, you know ...it's roadtrip time! Tours, festivals and getting crunk this 2009 are all on the to do list and Monster Zoku Onsomb's video Tinker from the Attack LP 2006 Psychotronic Visuals makes me wanna rainbowRAGE for realz! Enjoy!

Paolo Garcia - So it goes...

Paolo Garcia is a traveling animator/filmmaker, waiting to set foot in France to work on the animated television series hit Wakfu. He currently resides in Philadelphia, but So It Goes... was part of his final project for the Vancouver Film School which was made for a Classical Animation course.

Garcia got the idea from watching the episode Plains from the hit series Planet Earth, what caught his eye in particular were the snow geese. "I remember seeing a fox, and it raided a nest of chicks. It wasn't content with one, so it tried to get five into it's mouth at once, then the snow geese mom and dad came, and the fox dropped them all, but they were already dead. Then the fox slyly backs off, and grabs the only one still alive and runs with it... It was so ironic I thought and such a kind of testament to how survival is very very cruel, but also it's the mechanism of life, and how the world works, I mean sometimes it just doesn't make sense." - PG



Synopsis
It is an abstract representation of the mythology of creation. It's about life, the universe, and everything... except don't take it too seriously. Evolution and beauty are demolished by the monster, who the little creature believes is it's parent, and tries to beg for food, brutally ending the evolutionary chain.


::Garcia Insight::
Check out Pencil, it's a free software that you can use to animate as opposed to using Toon Boom which costs an arm and a leg, or Flash which, well... looks like flash.

The Static Fanatic

Rummaging through blogs is tough. So here's a lil blog that a fellow matey of ours writes for called The Static Fanatic which is based on the expanding noise/experimental music scene from a Wilmington scope and beyounddddd.

Carl (blogman!) also happens to be one of the elements found in The Khakazians. As known as the Caucasians910, the two piece comprised of Carl and Alli, who performed this past weekend over at the Be Yr Own Hero HYPE Fundraiser (held at the Juggling Gypsy). I got all giddy inside when I saw them use an Alesis Air Synth amongst other goodies as their experimental sound evolved throughout the set. They've got a few shows coming up, including one for Wilmington's WE FEST XIII which will be held this May 21st - 25th.

If you're looking for more on the Wilmington Noise scene check out 910 Noise, which is a group of artists sharing the same ideals of art & sound to showcase noise & experimental acts in the 910 area. And don't forget to holla at The Static Fanatic .

Speaking in Code

I can't wait till this film hits the local theaters...Speaking in Code is an intimate account of people who are completely lost in music. A heartbreaking and lighthearted documentary, it's a vérité glimpse into the world of techno/. The film takes you around the world, following the people who make electronic music ... their lives.

Speaking in Code took around 3 years to make and was in productions since June of 2005. Amy Grill (Director/Producer) and Scott Sans (Director of Photography) shot Europe for a month summer 2006. Filming completed in spring 2008 and the final cut was completed late spring 2008. Speaking in Code will be submitting to film festivals soon and is seeking distribution.

Starring : Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Monolake, Philip Sherburne, David Day & Amy Grill.

Also featuring:
Ellen Allien, Tobias Thomas, Marc LeClair AKA Akufen, Wolfgang Voigt, Michael Mayer, Reinhard Voigt, Sascha Ring AKA Apparat, Sascha Funke, Mario Willms AKA Douglas Greed, Miss Kittin, Dan Paluska AKA Six Million Dollar Dan, Mike Uzzi AKA Smartypants

Featuring music by:
Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Robag Wruhme, Ellen Allien & Apparat, The Field, Monolake, Michael Mayer, Gas, Jonas Bering, SCSI-9, Gui Boratto, Superpitcher, Steadycam, Dettinger, The Rice Twins, Reinhard Voigt, Oxia

director/producer AMY GRILL
edited by JASON BLANCHARD & AMY GRILL
director of photography SCOTT SANS
contact info: AMY@SQUAR3.COM 617.417.2944