The patient sits in his padded cell, his eyes staring, one up at the ceiling, the other straight at you. He is “dangerous”, he is ‘crazy”, he thinks that he is half man, half lizard and that the world is run by an insane group of satan worshipping aliens who feed on human fear and…you know the normal sort of “insane” rambling stuff. If indeed you came across this completely mad-hatted individual, he would tell you that to be truly mad you have to do a few things, these include: disagreeing with the norm, always wearing stupid clothing, preaching to everyone else about the things in your head, holdong the belief that George Bush is either an intelligent and noble leader or Satan and finally, having crazy music consistently playing in your head.
When you see one “crazy” person who is twitching gently to the imaginary music in their head, you might ask them what it sounds like and they would probably say “AGGGHHHHHHH it sounds like the silence between the knife and the cheese board”, well now there is a new explanation for what the music inside the insane majorities head sounds like, it sounds like Yes My Ninjas?
With a huge scream, first track ‘A New Look’ on this debut E.P, softly goes into a mix of random shouts, injections of programmed drum n bass and deep, distorted guitars.rnThe random noises from the keyboard regularly get taken over by dark and deep riffs from the guitars and bass along with big vocals. rnThe guitars keep the melodies catchy and by breaking back down to the simple drum n bass, synths and keyboard samples the songs have a really varied dynamic, building up and breaking down over and over again.
The songs have lots of inventive tempo and dynamic changes and with lots of random samples, effects and injections of screams, it is hard to know what the hell is going on! rnThe artistic idea and feel of their songs is really good with Yes My Ninjas? replacing structured and catchy songs with a complete army of random and flowing noise, and even though at times it makes you disorientated, the contrast is really clever and gives them some real difference and dynamic to their noise.
The mix of emotion and tempo gives them a huge variety and keeps their songs flowing and interesting. With some very catchy melodies at times it is also very tuneful but like all good performers Yes My Ninjas? refuse to become predictable and throw in as many warped and weird ideas as they can. rnI certainly felt that there was a good balance to this sound and the mix of driving drum n bass and funky programming fighting against the dark and disturbing metal worked well, as did the changes in energy and power. rnThis is very experimental music and not the sort of stuff you would sit at home listening to ever night, but it is clever and intelligent and very original.
It will never be in the charts, but I don’t think thats why Yes My Ninjas? make music but with so many ideas and genres covered, it is diverse and different, whoever said no-one ever produces anything new these days should get a listen to this lot. rnrn
Reviewed by: Gaz
