E-Mail This Article to a Friend The new guys Sixtoo and Blockhead join the Ninja Tune stable BY TONY WARE

Producer/DJ Sixtoo is, in fact, six foot two. But his head isn’t in the clouds. He feet are firmly planted in the realm of Ninja Tune electronica, a world where hip-hop as an Abstract Expressionist art form has been thriving for more than a decade. "Home recording has made it too easy to record," he says over the phone from his Montreal home studio. "Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you do it well. Using the same technology, so many producers are leaning toward the microsampling techniques passed down from techno. I’m more interested in sampling genres than records . . . emulating techniques to get something that sounds authentic to the period that inspired it without regurgitating it."

Fellow Ninja Tune producer/DJ Blockhead, who joins Sixtoo, Amon Tobin, and Kid Koala at the Paradise this Wednesday, has a square jaw. But if he’s a square peg, then it’s only in the most positive of ways. "Many producers try to make a bunch of different samples go together as if they were always meant to," the New Yorker says over the phone from London. "I prefer to take pieces from everywhere and just put them rubbing against each other."

Sixtoo and Blockhead are among the newest signings from two of the three key regions that define the London-based Ninja Tune label. Founded by the production duo Coldcut, Ninja Tune has grown from a mad scientist’s chemistry lab to a more mannered though still maniacal R&D firm for bracing beat work. The wintry melancholy of Sixtoo’s Montreal and the isolated bustle of Blockhead’s New York complement the increasingly introspective tone of Ninja Tune’s long-standing reputation for top-notch instrumental hip-hop.

"I certainly think my music has fallen out of the concept of hip-hop," says Sixtoo (real name Robert Squire) when asked whether his May release Chewing on Glass & Other Miracle Cures constitutes hip-hop in a classical sense. "I love hip-hop, and it taught me everything. I started making beats to rap over. But through sampling I learned to appreciate other genres. Once hip-hop stopped being primarily sample-based, it alienated me. So I don’t want to be associated with commercial hip-hop. I like a lot of stuff: peripheral psych-rock like Jaja Jazzist; stuff that creates a conversation between traditional and sample-based music."

This from a producer with ties to such über-MCs of the backpack circuit as Sage Francis and Buck 65. Sixtoo was also previously involved in trad hip-hop, producing beats for himself to rap over. But with the switch to Ninja Tune, he’s changed his game. Recording with Can’s Damo Suzuki, members of the chamber-rock ensemble Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Kid Koala collaborator P-Love, and paying heed to the recording techniques of two-track editors like Bitches Brew–era Miles Davis assemblage engineer Teo Macero and Jamaican rocksteady producer Joe Gibbs, Sixtoo has become a sonic collage artist. His tracks piece together homages to krautrock, dub, and jazz fusion. The results are heady and humid, even if it takes you a moment to become acclimated to his neo-symphonic assemblages. "A Sixtoo production is like a high-school dance. There are weirdos on one side, girls on the other; it’s initially awkward. But once the sounds start mingling, it gets good and grinding."

Similar in style but not in stroke, Blockhead grew up in Greenwich Village, and his upbringing is reflected in his productions. He’s given to triggering throngs of cyclic samples that coagulate into a bittersweet basement bump. A frequent producer of tracks good enough to carry the dense dictation of Aesop Rock, Blockhead (real name Anthony Simon) cut his teeth crafting beats for rappers. His formative years included throwing in with Boogie Down Productions, and he wound his way through the Juice Crew, A Tribe Called Quest, and Large Professor tracks before finding his current love for the groove of Southern hip-hop. Blockhead picked up his name when he too was an MC and self-depreciating names were all the rage.

Prior to his Ninja Tune debut, Music by Cavelight (due March 23), he had never composed instrumental tracks, but he appreciates how it’s challenged him to construct with different climaxes in mind. Relying on an ASR10 sampling work station, Blockhead draws on rudimentary piano skills in order to drape melodies over the hazy hustle and flicker of disembodied voices. His approach relies more on construction than on reconstruction; he pieces together seemingly disparate elements but makes sure that even if his chunky jazz loops change consistency, they still flow with the unwavering intensity of a crowded NYC sidewalk. "I see my music as a guy who doesn’t read books but writes. I’m just working off instinct."

Sixtoo and Blockhead join Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, Bonobo, and Diplo on the Ninja Tune tour that comes to the Paradise, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, this Wednesday, March 17; call (617) 423-NEXT.