Ninja Tune

Ninja Tune is an English independent record label based in London with a satellite office in Los Angeles. It was founded by Matt Black and Jonathan More (professionally known as Coldcut) and managed by Peter Quicke and others.

Inspired by a visit to Japan, Black, and More created Ninja Tune in 1990 as a means, according to Billboard magazine, "to escape the creative control of major labels," and as a vehicle to release music of an underground nature, free from the constraints they experienced in their brief stints with Arista and Big Life. The label has been called "visionary" and "reliably excellent." It has signed a diverse range of artists, has created its own publishing company, Just Isn't Music and finds innovative uses of software.

The label's first releases – the first five volumes of DJ Food's Jazz Brakes – were produced by Coldcut in the early 1990s. They were composed of instrumental sample-based cuts that led the duo to help pioneer new instrumental hip hop beats genres (alo… More