Music
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Saturday October 20, 2007
Pub 340 - Vancouver, BC
In the event my ears heal, I will certainly bestow my humble thoughts to the Canadian recording industry - in a simplified form so they will understand of course. Slow, dimwitted A&R people need to stop looking for a new marketing ploy and focus on finding good songwriters with true skills. Here are three. Young, hungry and bursting with talent, Vancouver’s new, (and only!), kings of Throwthefuckdownskankfunkrock have arrived.
In a nutshell – Ninjaspy is the best of all worlds. Drawing influence from music only you and I have heard, this trio of brothers, (average age 22), banded together and delivered a diversified musical debut of such incredible intricacy its nothing short of perfection. Definitely something worth getting your mind around.
With barely enough room for the ABORT TV crew, (Mark, Gary and Ben, who were in the pit with their cameras - true soldiers), Pub 340 was the locale in question this night as the “Triad in Blood� (as they are also known), came out swinging. Pulling tracks from their debut album “Pi Nature�, (produced by the legendary Garth Richardson of Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers fame), the sound was extra tasty crispy and Ninjaspy was fucking bang on. Album versions were played in full frontal assault mode with little improvisation and rightfully so. Vocalist/guitarist Joel, drummer Adam and bassist Tim Parents’ infectious hooks had their loyal fans singing along with fervent conviction. Even earlier the hype was evident as everyone in the club was discussing the band and ninja gear was the dress code.
A legion of followers has arisen for a band that few know exists. Well, perhaps not you… at least, not yet. Think a 3 piece Mr. Bungle with Patton’s vocals taking a turn for the better, add some laser beams and dreads, turn it all up to eleven, stand the fuck back and enjoy.
As cliché as it may seem, Ninjaspy is “The Next Big Thing� coming out of Vancouver. You have no choice but to drop your weapons, throw down the skank and surrender to your inner souls cry for musical salvation. Pay attention Canadian recording industry, Ninjaspy is on the rise and the people’s salvation is at hand.
By E.S. Day & Grimm Culhane - ABORT Magazine
Vancouvers Ninjaspy has brazenly broken the mould of what tradi-
tional Canadian Loud music should sound like. As a matter of fact, I
can't even begin to their discuss their debut album, produced master-
fully and impeccably by Garth Richardson (Rage Against The Machine,
Red Hot Chili Peppers); he has obviously seen the originality factor
and talented musicianship amongst a trio brothers (Literally. The Triad
In Blood as they are also known). This 3 piece menace to the ears
of society are geared and primed to invade and conquer. Self-coined
Skankore...you've been warned.
1.Defecating On What's Left of Our Child 4:47 -Well right of the top we have a rollercoaster ride ready to jump on, and
with no operator manning the controls god only knows where your going; a perfect entrance into the world of Ninjaspy. All
out - balls out- metal/funk hardcore, and without warning, I might add.
2.Subartic Trickery- Straight bass slap-pound-punch-kick-kill. Thanks. We needed that.
3.Hit By A Cement Mixer 4:48 Hate using the name Kurt Cobain or Layne Staley, but Joel Parent really does shine
through in implementing his viva la vocal prowess. Emotional, brooding, haunting.
4.Love Poem II 2 :18 - Sorry guys, will appeal to some â not to all. Not filler by any means
5.Out of Tampons 2:59 Believe it or not, the title actually represents a nod to the environment, ladies leave the boys
alone, they're on your side. Chorus will be an instant live favourite. Chantable, moshable, delicious.
6.SOS From the SOS 4:23- Ska-dafied Skate anthem if you want it to be. Fishbone would be proud.
7.Pure Sketch 4:01 Extremely mature Sing-along stuff maybe even a bic-flic into the air at the shows. Can't blame
em.
8.Circle Pity 2:57 Sorry, can't play it. Nope. Can't even listen to it . Too good. How about this? If I put this on the speaker
system at the office, I will kill everyone in here today. Worth going postal for. By far the best track on the album. Those
motherfuckers.
9.haTed 3:17 Full throttle track , nose-diving airplane soundtrack. Plus, after this you'll want hit the ground and burst
into a ball of flames.
10. Evolution of The Skid - 2:58 I would have to say that I was thrust into the opening sequence from Inspector Gadget the
moment I hit play. Insanely infunktious chorus, this hook-laden song would certainly give the bands peers a shit-scare A
Modern day Mr. Bungle and almost as polished. Keep in mind - only a trio. Brilliant.
11.Submission-3:24 Would it be safe to say that this is a radio friendly track almost throwing back to the Seattle sound
ala Alice in Chains? Non-intentional mind you. Catchy as fuck nonetheless.
12.Dot Calm Down-3:23 One of the older tracks , the raw nature of the musicianship again blankets the chart-happy chorus
and saves the song from becoming a Dearly Departed track
Ninjaspy.net
By. E.S Day
- ABORT Magazine
Stop # 17 : The Lamplighter for Ninjaspy.
Anticipating a group of companions finally, I have attempted and succeeded in making it way the hell down to the Lamplighter mid-evening for Ninjaspy. This was on recommendation from someone, and while I listened to and got somewhat scared by the samples I’d heard that afternoon, I decided to check it out anyhow. I made it there with that stop at the Media Club in about fifteen minutes. I head into the grossly smelly Lamplighter and discover Ninjaspy is really not my type of music - less so than some of the stuff I’d seen at the Roxy - but they bloody well are entertaining. All dreadlocks and fricking samurai swords, giant pants and flying limbs. Not a speck of the stage was left untouched by this band’s chaotic feet.
By Andy Scheffler - Cordmag
On a cold and stormy Wednesday, coming down off of my Whopper high, I decided to attend an evening of auditory insanity. The venue: The Biltmore Cabaret (300 block E Kingsway, near Main st, Vancouver); the lineup: Quartered, Rallycar, Exit This Side, The Turn, and Ninjaspy. This show was a part of New Music West and put on by a local radio station, CFOX.
Fashionably late, I arrived at around 11 o’clock to find the 3rd band just about to take the stage. I grabbed my self a Bowen Island Lager, despite the bartender’s insistence that the Pale was better (I like to be different), and immediately my ears were drowned in a sea of mediocrity. Its not that they (I can’t remember which band it was, they’re all the same) were that bad, I just can’t stand bands that sound exactly like every other rock band on the radio. I should have assumed this would be the fare, you know, cause the show was put on by a radio station and virtually every song played on the radio sucks massive gonads. Queue beer number 2 (the Pale this time).
After an unbearably long set, the horror ceased and I was delighted to hear an eclectic mix of jazz, alternative, and funk. I’ll have to try out the Biltmore again. Their sound was above average for a bar in Vancouver and the atmosphere was actually quite pleasant (this from the guy who frequents such fine establishments as Pub 340 and The Cobalt).
Next up, Ninjaspy, aka the best band to come out of Vancouver since… well… yeah. They are kind of a mix of Metal, Ska, Hardcore, Funk and Grunge, with a hefty dose of randomness. Now admittedly, I was already a big Ninjaspy fan, but they totally blew the whole crowd away. After a night full of horrendous pop-rock bull, I expected many of the attendees to flee at the first chord containing more depth than a shot glass, but they just lapped it up. The energy put off by the band and reciprocated by the crowd was palpable enough that I’m positive that the solution to the energy crisis / global warming is to get Ninjaspy to play a large festival and hook everyone there to electrodes.
After opening with “Defecating On What’s Left of Our Child” and playing crowd favorites like “Evolution of the Skid”, “Hit By A Cement Mixer”, “Hated”, and “Out of Tampons”, they threw in some of their unreleased content including my favorite, “Brotherman”, and a brand new song “Throw the Skank Down” that sounds very promising indeed. Finishing their set with their patented “Circle Pity” / “SOS” dual finale, the near perfect Wednesday had come to a close… but wait… demands for an encore shook the room. This brought forth the “Shuriken Dance”.
Integral to every Ninjaspy show is the concept of the “Shuriken Dance”. Bringing together a mix of different styles from “skanking”, and hardcore dancing to break dancing and anything in between, its all about freedom of expression, having a good time, and everybody getting along. On this occasion, the band even provided the crowd with inflatable swords to aid them in fighting off the invisible enemies that intended to stop the fun(k).
I never expected to see a show this good on a Wednesday, but it soared far and above my lofty standards. While I missed my usual terrible movie that accompanies Whoppers on hump day, somehow I just don’t feel too disappointed.
By gmonkey - Monkey With Swords for Hands
Although they’re supposed to be sneaky and secretive, ninjas are ubiquitous nowadays in pop culture. From a resurgence in interest in those terrible kung fu B-movies of the ‘70s to the popular AskANinja.com website, you can’t escape them.
Vancouver’s NinjaSpy would seem to be following this trend, except when you talk to vocalist Joel Parent you realize that it goes deeper than that. After naming the band, Parent got intensely interested in ninjas and ninja culture and ended up talking my ear off about the detailed history of the martial art.
“It started as kind of a peasant uprising against a dominant class, which is kind of how I look at what we’re doing—an indie band trying to get noticed,” he says. “I could talk all day about ninjas.”
Could he ever.
The band fuses the breakdowns of hardcore with the groove of ska music in an effort to incite the wildest parties they can. The fusion of these two seemingly disparate styles of music came out of the band members’ interests and a desire to get as many people as they can dancing to their music.
“If you look at both styles of music, they’re both dancey, but in different ways and we wanted to bring them together,” explains Parent. “The thing that turned it into ska and hardcore was seeing how big dancing was in those scenes and we wanted to create music anyone could dance to. I’m really about everyone having their own space in a pit and enough room for free expression.”
The band went on a short jaunt last year, but this will be their first proper tour. While the members don’t know exactly what to expect from ours or any other city, that hasn’t stopped NinjaSpy from getting exuberant—too exuberant to be stealthy ninjas, perhaps.
“We did a little tour last summer to Winnipeg and back, but this is our first tour all the way to the other side of the country. I honestly don’t know what to expect, but we’re pretty excited.”
By Bryan Birtles - VUE Weekly
Discography
Pi-Nature (2007)
Speed Queen(2001)
Photos
Bio
We live in an age of misunderstanding. Music is chained to the image of its creators, and ninja are commonly perceived as heartless human weapons whose skills, like those of artists, are cheaply bought and sold. In most music, there is a deviation from real human connection. In life, there is an imaginary division of mind, body and spirit. True freedom of expression is strangled by social choke holds imposed by tides of opinion. To survive this one must adapt, evolve and re-connect themselves to their human nature. One must reunite music with dancing, mind with body and thought with action. One must become each moment, invisible yet vivid. Become nothing, immune to judgment.
Misunderstanding was especially rampant in 1999 when three brothers, the Triad in Blood, began making music together. Joel, Adam, and Tim Parent, at the ages of 15, 13 and 11, respectively, came to the end of the century with distinct musical preferences despite a lifetime of proximity. Training in the intricacies of hardcore, ska, grunge, reggae, funk, jazz and metal for seven long years, the brothers struggled to find a functional idiom for their evolving mix of music and hormones. After a few independent releases including a 2001 basement LP entitled Speed Queen and two demos (2002 & 2005), the dawn of 2006 finally unmasked Ninjaspy.
Ninjaspy picked up momentum where their faceless seven year muse left off. Since then they have played relentlessly in Vancouver and toured several times across Canada with help from friends and peers in the local and national independent music industry. In correlation with a commitment to real, reciprocal human connection and zero-ego, high-energy, free-expression dance pits, support for Ninjaspy grows with every tour and every performance.
With help from prolific producers GGGarth Richardson and Ben Kaplan, they have entered the next level of their career, releasing their debut CD "Pi Nature" in the Fall of 2007. Equipped and, indeed, armed with their own musical weaponry, Ninjaspy aim to engage people with radical ideas on a level plane.
Pi-nature is like an epic war of words and music. Initiating the onslaught with a swiftly drawn metal katana, Defecating On Whats Left Of Our Child is the soundtrack for the chaotic melee between opposing clans of life and choice on the battlefields of youthful cerebra. While children of the west contemplate procreation, child soldiers are forced to march like drones through Sub-Arctic Trickery, their moral inhibitions systematically dismantled by guerilla governments. Sirens wail as if in remorse for lost lives, and Hit By A Cement Mixer captures the erratic confusion of grief and loss. Mourners are rudely interrupted as the wheedly-wheedly guitar starts the silly campfire scream-along Out Of Tampons, the essential Ninjaspy analogy for our mistreatment of the earth. People prevail and machines crumble under the funk thunder of Evolution of the Skid and Dot Calm Down. Somber serenity floats eerily over silent battlefields in Pure Sketch. Circle Pity and SOS from the SOS send a clear signal out to all those closet dwellers that it is time to emerge from their hiding places, punch the floor, kick the sky and throw the skank down.
In the world of Ninjaspy, the skank is defined as the negativity that exists inside every human being that inhibits us from freedom to express ourselves. The skank is thrown down each time that Ninjaspy has the honor of sharing their crafts with people in a live environment, where dancing destroys the enemy.
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