Various Artists – You Don’t Know: Ninja Cuts [2008; Beat Records, Ninja Tune]

Presenting three CDs worth of label holdings, this compilation largely restricts itself to material issued by Ninja Tune in the five years leading up to its release (the earliest inclusion comes from 1998, with nothing from the eight years of the label’s existence before that making an appearance). The set serves up pieces of alternative pop, conscious hip-hop, amped-up breakbeat, jazzy leftfield, pop rap, electrofunk, and a bevy of other niche and cross-pollinated styles, with over forty artists, plus dozens of guests and remixers, shown off over the three hours and change of its run-time.

Unsurprisingly, most of the picks are tunes which had been deemed worthy of being put out as a single, due to catchiness, especially strong beats, or whatever other factors, so there’s a fairly strong base-line to the quality of the music. Production values are high, with a warehouse’s worth of synths, drum machines, and samples put to work, while the turntable antics associated with the label’s founders, Coldcut (who get in a few tracks of their own), get much less exposure than might be expected.

There’s no apparent division or theming between the three discs (titled, respectively, “You”, “Don’t”, and “Know”), aside from the second having a lot of heavy lyrical repetition, which seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity for running the tracks in chronological (or even alphabetical) order, or breaking it into groups of the most similarly-styled tracks. Despite that, there’s a good flow to each, and to the compilation as a whole, so it’s not much of a fault, just weirdly directionless for such a large collection. And though that bulkiness does make diving into the fifty songs a little off-putting, it also gives a nice cross-section of Ninja Tunes’ styles at the time, so in the end, it does all that it was meant to do.

Various Artists – Ed Rec Vol. 2 [2007; Because Music, Ed Banger Records, Vice Records, Wagram Music]

Released the same year as Justice’s debut album, this compilation features tracks from them and their label-mates on the French label of Ed Banger Records, with French house
being the primary flavor,

while hip-hop, electro, hard techno, and turntablism influences float about freely. Stiff buzzes, glossy touch-ups, manic percussion, and odd-beat but funky rhythms fill the music, most of it eschewing vocals.

Tone slides, lo-fi samples, and over-amping lend things a generally buzzy feel, which helps mask the heavy amounts of production that went into the electronic pieces with gritty patinas and forceful kicks. A good tour through the electronic stage of the era, with most of the tracks still sounding ahead of their time, and an enjoyable batch of lively electronica even without that context.

Various Artists – Camping [2005; BPitch Control]

Twenty tracks of off-beat techno pack this label sampler, with chill vocals, dribbled beats, stiff clicks, and melting synths drifting together. Bits of chipbreak, acid house, electro, and other flavors bubble up from the dozen or so contributing acts, and while the tempos and action occasionally become frenzied, the music rarely loses its sense of controlled cool. That also helps bind the diverse tracks together across their range of fluctuations and stutters, building a sense of the label’s style on the whole (extensive sampling of Kid Rock associate Joe C. in Housemeister’s “Do You Wanna Funk” aside).

One of the strongest points in the compilation’s favor, though, is the openness the musicians show to bringing in single points of divergence to the rest of the song’s shaping, like the injection of Mediterranean strings into electro, or post-punk bass lick loops combed into house rhythms. Though few of the featured artists have stuck with the label to the current day (with owner Ellen Allien’s plentiful output being the prime exception), the general attitude of the music gives a clear sense of how BPitch Control presented themselves at the time, even with the quick turn-about offered by the musical switch-ups.

Various Artists – Basic Replay [2007; Basic Replay]

With this compilation, the Basic Replay record label provides a thorough overview of the reggae tunes they’d reissued, mingling relatively big names like Chuck Turner and White Mice with lesser-knowns and under-repped greats. Dabs of dub and dancehall rhythms drift up and pass on through the sixteen tracks, keeping up an easy flow of style through the variety of acts and attitudes. With virtually all of the inclusions culled from the late ‘80s, there is some similarity of production quality from track to track, but they all come through with clear and full-bodied tones thanks to some careful remastering. A very solid collection, making it even more of a shame that the label’s reissue efforts ended the same year as its release.

Various Artists – Adult Swim Singles Program 2012 [2012; [adult swim]]

This thirteen-track compilation brings together popular counter-culture acts of the time, including Com Truise, Wavves, Death Grips, and Flying Lotus, among others, for a collection which eagerly swerves through a broad range of styles and dispositions. Electronic, garage rock, metal, dreampop, and more are served up without much rhyme or reason to the track ordering, and while the picks are almost unanimously enjoyable, or at least stylish, the jumbling doesn’t do the experience any favors beyond underlining the already-evident variety. As a result, while it does offer an informative cross-cut of the year’s top alternative acts (as estimated by the cable cartoon channel), that’s about all it does.