ninjaspy

N I N J A S P Y
“Become nothing and you can not be broken down.
Success is not measured by who wins, but by who survives”
-Shidoshi Paul Mann

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. For a year and a half they played relentlessly in Vancouver and toured several times across Canada with help from friends in Whitey and Batoche. 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 show.

Through alliances with prolific producers GGGarth Richardson (Rage Against the Machine, RHCP, Mudvayne) and Ben Kaplan, Ninjaspy released their debut cd πature (Pi-Nature) in the fall of 2007. The record finally fused the fragments of influence Ninjaspy had been training in for years. πature and Ninjaspy live have one predominant similarity: From start to finish one scarcely knows what to expect. From downbeat to breakdown, reggae, ska and hardcore are wed in musical cacophony.

πature is like an epic war of words and music. Initiating the onslaught with a swiftly drawn metal katana, “Defecating On What’s 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” can be defined as the negativity inside each one of us that inhibits us from feeling free to love and express ourselves. To survive we must throw the skank down until we die.