You can tell a lot about a person when they don’t know you’re watching them. Throughout Bobby Sciortino’s and my interview with killer rock hip hop band Shinobi Ninja they claim an affinity with a nascent music movement. During the two opening opening acts at Santos Party House lead singer Dave Aaron is front and center cheering along the bands.
Meanwhile Terminator Dave walks up to us during the Rad Out Crew set and he is beaming. “Everybody on that stage?” he says, “Are my friends. Everybody performing tonight I’ve played with before”.
Shinobi Ninja are Dave and Baby Girl on lead vocals. Dave is an extroverted natural born showman and Baby Girl a flat out knock out killa dilla on stage, quieter in person plus twin brothers Maniac Mike on guitar and Terminator Dave on drums, guitarist and loquacious nice guy Adriano Morez also on guitar and finally DJ Axis and we are all piled into Santos Party House men’s room an hour before the gig.
And the place to start? Progressive Studio in Hell’s Kitchen.
“It doesn’t exist any more” DA explains. “It was owned by a coupla dudes from Brooklyn. One guy played in a band called the Brooklyn Bombs. And an older dude was part of the recording industry in the eighties and he was on his way down. “
Adrian: “It was a pretty crazy situation, there were a lot of people around, a lotta freaky people to collobarate with or whatever. Me and Dave started there as interns, went on to work as assistants, then as engineers and it got to the point where we were hiring the interns ourselves.That’s where we met the guitarist Maniac Mike”.
Terminator Dave: “Mikey (my twin brother) and I had just finished up at the University of Wisconsin. We partied our face off, we had a really good time there and we all met up there. All of a sudden Mikey and Dave and Johnny are all sharing sessions and … Wax Machine, our band before we got together with these guys. We were always rehearsing in the studio And then one day Dave is like yo you’ve gotta start playing on my songs. A year and a half ago we decided to make Shinobi Ninja.
DA: “This band is probably like three or four years old but it trickled into other things.”
Terminator Dave: “Wax Machine was a hip hop rock band. It was a rapper and a rock band and Marcus was rockin’ the DJ.”
The inclusion of Baby Girl -a former dancer with Ricky Marin, Diddy and Santogold, who was taking a masterclass in vocals at Progressive Studio, gave Shinobi Ninja’s an edge their contemporaries don’t have. She only completely shines on the excellent remix of “Superstar” in their recorded music but on stage she holds her own with the manic, burst of energy which is DA. Bobby Sciortino is going to review the truncated set so all I will say right now is they are a phenomenally good live band: as giving to their audience , as energetic, as fun and as just straight glorious as you can possibly imagine. A day after Phish became human ambient, Shinobi Ninja reminded me why I loved concerts so much.
Back in the men’s room Terminator Dave is telling us about the begining’s: “Our band Wax Machine were going through lead singers and the last one came and was gone and I turned and said ‘fuck this, Mike we’ve gotta do something’ And Dave was rockin round with us so we went and said ‘hey Dave Aaron, let’s make a song together’
“We did some freestyle first. What was that line: “oh bleeding Jesus won’t you drive my car’?”
DA: “I liked their work ethic and I liked their hustle and when I fell out of the situation I was in I said ‘I’ll just come to your house and freestyle songs’. And I freestyled a song and it was not that great And it was what what it was but I was like ‘Ok that’s what that feels like I’ll see you tomorrow’ And we worked on ‘Brooklyn To Babylon'” “Brooklyn To Babylon” is fucking epic and even more so with a terrific new video featuring the band dancing up a storm on the streets of Brooklyn and with their neighbours around to help out. Every promise Shinobi Ninja make you is fulfilled on the song.
Adriano: “We were experiment, the twins and him, they were just like trying to define what it was going to be.”
DA: “If you can consider ‘Brooklyn To Babylon’ written on the Monday, there was a song written on the Tuesday, the Wednesday., Thursday and Friday. While the light was shining, man, we just kept on shining it.”
Adriano: “Since these guys went in and wrote the first wave of songs, the band came together. They picked Axis to be the DJ, they weren’t sure who they wanted to play guitar but they picked me and they picked Adara (Baby Girl) to sing because she was ready for that.”
Shinobi Ninja are so ready to go for it, so ready to take the world by storm, there is an eagerness and an energy to their rock-hip hop Not just “Brooklyn To Babylon” but “stop”, “Superstar”, all of them, have been worked on to the point of being absolutely perfect. During the set Bobby turns to me and says “These guys are really good”. He’s right. Shinobi Ninja are really good.
I asked the band who they would compare themselves too. This is DA’s reply: “Anybody who is homeless, anybody who is struggling. I’ve never had a benefits card before. I feel like I’m a shrimp man just eating pieces of dust like everybody else. I don’t consider myself any better than anybody else.”
Terminator Dave: “And yet we are having the best time of our lives. Like our song says ‘we’re a superstar round the world but we ain’t got nothing”.
Shinobi Ninja are superstars at Rock NYC if that helps.
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