Coldcut - Knowledge

1378:, for Android and iOS, in collaboration with London-based arts and technology firm Seeper. Geared toward both casual listeners and more experienced DJs and music producers, the freemium app allows users to download, remix and make music with samplepacks and tunepacks that feature pro quality sample libraries and also original tracks and mixes by Coldcut, as well as other Ninja artists, creating something new altogether. With the "intuitive yet deep" app, users can turn instruments on and off, swap between clips, add glitches and effects, trigger and pitch-bend stabs and one-off samples, and change the tempo of the track instantly. Users can additionally record as they mix and instantly upload to SoundCloud or save the mixes locally. Tunepack releases for Ninja Jamm are increasingly synchronised with Ninja Tune releases on conventional formats. To date, over 30 tunepacks have been released, including 1333:'s Black Dog Space in London, showcasing artwork, design and photography from the label's 20-year history. A compilation album was released on 20 September in two formats: a regular version consisting of two 2-disc volumes, and a limited edition which contained six CDs, six 7" vinyl singles, a hardback copy of the book, a poster and additional items. Ninja Tune also incorporated a series of international parties. This repositioned Ninja as a continually compelling and influential label, being one of the "longest-running (and successful) UK indie labels to come out of the late-1980s/early-90s explosion in dance music and hip-hop" (Pitchfork, 28 September 2010). Pitchfork claimed it had a "right to show off a little". 1283:

Union, a piece of VJ cinema, political campaign, music tour, party, art exhibition and social media hub. Energy Union toured 12 EU countries throughout 2009 and 2010, completing 24 events in total. Coldcut created the Energy Union show for the tour, a one-hour Audio/Visual montage on the theme of Intelligent Energy. In presenting new ideas for climate, environmental and energy communication strategies, the Energy Union tour was well received, and reached a widespread audience in cities across the UK, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain and the Czech Republic.

51: 4843: 901:'s Meltdown. The "beautifully simple and devastatingly effective" software was deemed revolutionary, and became recognized as a major factor in the evolution of clubs. It eventually earned a place in the American Museum of the Moving Image's permanent collection. As quoted by The Independent, Coldcut's rallying cry was "Don't hate the media, be the media'". NME was quoted as saying: "Veteran duo Coldcut are so cool they invented the remix - now they are doing the same for television." 1073:

gigabytes of footage from the last 40 years of US politics were made accessible to download, allowing participants to create a cut-up over a Coldcut beat. Coldcut also collaborated with TV Sheriff and NomIg to produce two audiovisual pieces "World of Evil" (2004) and "Revolution '08" (2008), both composed of footage from the United States presidential elections of respective years. The music used was composed by Coldcut, with "Revolution '08" featuring a remix by the Qemists.

5328: 5315: 5302: 5289: 5260: 5247: 5234: 5221: 653:, as a self-titled "technocoloured escape pod", and a way to escape the creative control of major labels. The label enabled them to release music under different aliases (e.g. Bogus Order, DJ Food), which also helped them to avoid pigeonholing as producers. Ninja Tune's first release was Bogus Order's "Zen Brakes". The name Coldcut stayed with Arista so there were no official Coldcut releases for the next three years. 5344: 5357: 5276: 5208: 762:, in addition to software developed specifically for the album's world tour. Hex's inclusion of music videos and "playtools" (playful art/music software programs) on Coldcut's CD-ROM was completely ahead of the curve at that time, offering viewers/listeners a high level of interactivity. Playtools such as My Little Funkit and Playtime were the prototypes for 1120:, which was quoted as being "one of the most vital and imaginative records Jon Moore and Matt Black have ever made", and saw the duo "continue, impressively, to find new ways to present political statements through a gamut of pristine electronics and breakbeats" (CITATION: Future Music, 2007). The fascinating array of guest vocalists included 905:

taking a session band out to reproduce what you put together in the studio using samples. It had a relationship to DJing, but was more interactive and more effective." Excitingly at that time, DJamm was pioneering in its ability to shuffle sliced loops into intricate sequences, enabling users to split loops into any number of parts.

742:, and used a lot of stock and sampled footage. Their "Timber" video, which created an AV collage piece using analogous techniques to audio sample collage, was put on heavy rotation on MTV. Stuart Warren Hill of Hexstatic referred to this technique as: "What you see is what you hear". "Timber" (which appears on both 789:

was an interactive installation which allowed users to mix sound, video, text and graphics and make their own audio-visual mix, modelled on the techniques and technology used by Coldcut in clubs and live performance events. It consisted of two consoles: the left controlling how the sounds are played,

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for the program's 40th anniversary. In October 2008, Coldcut celebrated the legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (the place where the Doctor Who theme was created) with a live DJ mix at London's legendary Roundhouse. The live mix incorporated classic Radiophonic Workshop compositions with extended

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software VJAMM. It allowed users to be a "digital video jockey", remixing and collaging sound and images and trigger audio and visual samples simultaneously, subsequently bringing futuristic technology to the audio-visual field. VJAMM rivalled some of the features of high-end and high cost tech at

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in 1996, Coldcut and Hex were commissioned to produce an interactive audiovisual piece called Synopticon. Conceived and designed by Robert Pepperell and Matt Black, the digital culture synthesiser allows users to "remix" sounds, images, text and music in a partially random, partially controlled way.

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was released in April 1989 on Ahead of Our Time and distributed by Big Life Records. The album gave "breaks the full length treatment", and showcased "their heady blend of hip-hop production aesthetics and proto-acid house grooves". It also rounded up a heap of unconventional guest features, quoted

447:". Released in October 1987, the landmark remix is said to have "laid the groundwork for hip hop's entry into the UK mainstream", becoming a breakthrough hit for Eric B & Rakim outside the U.S., reaching No. 15 in the UK, and the top 20 in a number of European countries. It featured a prominent 1309:

Starting in 2009, Matt Black, with musician/artist/coder Paul Miller (creator of the TX Modular Open Source synth), developed Granul8, a new type of visual fx/source Black termed a "granular video synthesiser". Granul8 allows the use of realtime VJ techniques including video feedback combined with

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In 2008, an international group of party organisers, activists and artists including Coldcut received a grant from the Intelligent Energy Department of the European Union, to create a project that promoted intelligent energy and environmental awareness to the youth of Europe. The result was Energy

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as "the first Brit artists to really get hip-hop's class-cutup aesthetic". It is regarded as the UK's first breaks record, the first UK record to be built entirely of samples and "the final link in the chain connecting European collage-experiment with the dance-remix-scratch edit". This was later

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and J Swinscoe. Let Us Replay! pieces together "short sharp shocks that put the mental in 'experimental' and still bring the breaks till the breakadawn". It also includes a few live tracks from the duo's innovative world tour. The CD-ROM of the album, which also contained a free demo disc of the

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Also working with Camart, Black designed DJamm software in 1998, which Coldcut used on laptops for their live shows, providing the audio bed alongside VJAMM's audiovisual samples. Matt Black explained they designed DJamm so they "could perform electronic music in a different way – i.e., not just

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Coldcut began integrating video sampling into their live DJ gigs at the time, and incorporated multimedia content that caused press to credit the act as segueing "into the computer age". Throughout the 90s, Hex created visuals for Coldcut's live performances, and developed the CD-ROM portion of

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was innovative in that it used sampled graphics, contained an ecological theme and a female lead character (dubbed "KT"), and its music changed through random processes. Coldcut and Hex presented this multimedia project as an example of the forthcoming convergence of pop music and computer-game

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artist TV Sheriff to produce their cut-up entitled "Revolution USA". The tactical-media project (coordinated with Canadian art duo NomIg) followed on from the UK version and extended the premise "into an open access participatory project". Through the multimedia political art project, over 12

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In February 1997, they released a double pack single "Atomic Moog 2000" / "Boot the System", the first Coldcut release on Ninja Tune. This was not eligible for the UK chart because time and format restrictions prevented the inclusion of the "Natural Rhythm" video on the CD. In August 1997, a

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in the New and Noteworthy section of the App Store in the week of release and it received over 100,000 downloads in the first week. Coldcut are developing Ninja Jamm further after the Android release garnered acclaim from the Guardian, Independent, Gizmodo and many more reviewers.

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the time. The VJAMM technology, praised as being proof of how far computers changed the face of live music, became seminal in both Coldcut's live sets (which were called a "revelaton" by Melody Maker and DJ sets. Their CCTV live show was featured at major festivals including

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game, interactive visuals and audio), was a forerunner of the "CD+" concept, uniting music, graphics, and video games into one. This multi-dimensional entertainment product received wide coverage in the national media, including features on Dance Energy, Kaleidoscope on

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series. The release was credited with "bringing to wider attention the sort of freestyle mixing the pair were always known for through their radio show on KISS FM, Solid Steel, and their steady club dates". It was voted "Best Compilation of All Time" by

470:, Hex's collaborative work went on to incorporate 3D modelling, punk video art, and algorithmic visuals on desktop machines. The video for Coldcut's 'Christmas Break' in 1989 is arguably one of the first pop promos produced entirely on microcomputers. 699:

In 1992, Hex's first single - "Global Chaos" / "Digital Love Opus 1" - combined rave visuals with techno and ambient interactive visuals. In November of that year, Hex released Global Chaos CDTV, which took advantage of the possibilities of the new

5167: 416:" (one of the formats also included "That Greedy Beat") in 1987. All of these tracks were assembled using cassette pause button edits and later spliced tape edits that would sometimes run "all over the room". The duo used sampling from 607:. Conflicts arose with the major label, as Coldcut's "vision extended beyond the formulae of house and techno" and mainstream pop culture (CITATION: The Virgin Encyclopedia Of Nineties Music, 2000). Eventually, the duo's album 750:, their fifth) won awards for its innovative use of repetitive video clips synced to the music, including being shortlisted at the Edinburgh Television and Film Festival in their top five music videos of the year in 1998. 1143:, which was considered "no small feat in terms of technology or human effort". Coldcut was accompanied by scratch DJ Raj and AV artist Juxta, in addition to guest vocalists from the album, including UK rapper 1007:

Working with Marcus Clements in 2002, Coldcut released the sample manipulation algorhythm from their DJamm software as a standalone VST plugin that could be used in other software, naming it the "Coldcutter".

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During this time, Coldcut still produced for artists on their new label, releasing a flood of material under different names and continuing to work with young groups. They additionally kept on with

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and Jonathan More. Credited as pioneers for pop sampling in the 1980s, Coldcut are also considered the first stars of UK electronic dance music due to their innovative style, which featured

964:. With "Space Journey", Coldcut were arguably the first group to give fans access to the multitrack parts, or "stems" of their songs, building on the idea of interactivity and sharing from 929:

VJamm software, was one of the earliest audiovisual CD- ROMs on the market, and Muzik claimed deserved to "have them canonized...it's like buying an entire mini studio for under $ 15".

477:, a double LP of Coldcut productions and re-cuts, and the various aliases under which the duo had recorded. This continued the duo's tradition of releasing limited available vinyl. 985:

replaced typical video-game sound effects with electronic music; the player created sounds and melodies, intended to simulate a form of synesthesia. The soundtrack also featured

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From 2009 onwards, Black has been collaborating with coder and psychedelic mathematician William Rood to create a forthcoming project called Liveloom, a social media AV mixer.

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Also in 2002, Coldcut with UK VJs Headspace (now mainly performing as the VJamm Allstars developed Gridio, an interactive, immersive audio-visual installation for the

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In 2014, Coldcut did three soundtracks as part of the project New City, a series of animated skylines of the near future developed by Tomorrow's Thought Today's

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to remix "Autumn Leaves" led to one of Morris' most celebrated remixes, which became a minor legend in ambient music. It has appeared on numerous compilations.

1445:(with artists such as Tenderlonious, Tamar Osborn, Sibusile Xaba, Thabang Tabane and Tony Allen), which was released on their Ahead of Our Time Records label. 5411: 1279:. Coldcut and Morris' hour and a half performance resembled a documentary being remixed on the fly, cutting up nearly 15 hours' worth of Wilson's lectures. 292:, England (with satellite offices in Los Angeles and Berlin) with an overall emphasis on encouraging interactive technology and finding innovative uses of 50: 1448:

On November 19th, 2021 Ahead of Our Time released an ambient compilation curated out of old and new compositions and extra sequencing with the help of

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on the single "Find a Way". Though "Find a Way" was a minor hit in the UK, no more singles were released from the album. The duo was given the

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song. The record reached No. 1 in the UK in August, and remained there for five weeks, becoming 1988's second biggest selling single. Producer

444: 3982: 5085: 2934: 409:. The eclectic show became a unifying force in underground experimental electronic music and is still running, celebrating 25 years in 2013. 229:, through which these artists achieved pop chart success. In addition, Coldcut has remixed and created productions on tracks by the likes of 1022: 4600: 5106: 5011: 3445: 564:, utilizing Smith's freestyle raucous vocals over an acid house backing, and also including psych guitar samples from British rock band 4319: 3275: 3256: 3195: 5421: 5406: 455:. Off the back of its success in clubs, the Coldcut "Seven Minutes of Madness" remix ended up being promoted as the single in the UK. 960:

speeches, the 3-track EP included Nautilus' "Space Journey", which won an Intermusic contest in 2000. The video was widely played on

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Though Black had joined Kiss FM with his own mix-based show, the pair eventually joined forces on its own show later in 1987 called

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Sponsored by the British Council, in 2005 Coldcut introduced AV mixing to India with the Union project, alongside collaborators

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paid homage to the greats that inspired them. Their first album to be released on Ninja Tune, it featured guest appearances by

524: 488:, became a top ten hit, and peaked at No. 6. In the same year, under the guise Yazz and the Plastic Population, they produced " 4665: 3576: 1033:

led to a specially built version of Gridio, in a cave inside the castle mountain in Austria. Gridio was later commissioned by

556:". The album's track "I'm in Deep" (featuring Smith) prefigured the indie-dance guitar-breaks crossover of such bands as the 5159: 4060: 4037: 3411: 3229: 4445: 3486: 2981: 2817: 2682: 3624: 778: 589: 519:" became another UK Top 20 hit. Released in March 1989, it helped launch the career of the then relatively unknown singer 5138: 5130: 4471: 4370: 462:, a self-titled "multimedia pop group", with Mile Visman and Rob Pepperell. While working on videos for artists such as 4769: 4626: 3384: 5416: 3534: 1107: 371: 4419: 1348:

in London, which celebrated 100 years of electronic music and silent cinema. Coldcut put new music to films from the

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as an EP in which Coldcut created their own political party (The Guilty Party). Featuring scratches and samples of

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sample and many other vocal cut ups as well as a looped rhythm which later, when sped up, proved popular in the

4214: 1698: 1077: 921: 278: 1061:'s Savage Utopia project. Black performed the piece with Rimbaud, Eve Libertine and other players at London's 412:

The duo adopted the name "Coldcut" and set up a record label called Ahead Of Our Time to release the single "

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and London in 2007. That same year, Gridio was featured as part of Optronica at the opening week of the new

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for the album. Hex later evolved the software into the engine that was used on the Let Us Play! world tour.

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Two thousand and four also saw Coldcut produce a radio play in conjunction with renowned young author

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In 2010, Coldcut celebrated 20 years of releasing music with its label, Ninja Tune. A book entitled

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Additionally in 2008, Coldcut remixed "Ourselves", a Japanese No. 1 hit from the single "&" by

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was released, a double-disc remix album where Coldcut's classic tunes were remixed by the likes of

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reworking of the early track "More Beats + Pieces" gave them their first UK Top 40 hit since 1989.

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samples of hip-hop, soul, funk, spoken word and various other types of music, as well as video and

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In February 2007, Coldcut and Mixmaster Morris created a psychedelic AV obituary/tribute Coldcut,

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The next Coldcut single, released in February 1988, moved towards a more house-influenced style. "

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N.B. The High Point number in the NAT column represents the release's peak on the national chart.

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The year 1996 also brought the Coldcut name back to More and Black, and the pair celebrated with

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In 1990, whilst on their first tour in Japan (which also featured Norman Cook, who later became

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In July 2013, Coldcut produced a piece entitled "D'autre" based on the writings of French poet

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in 1994. Playtime was also used to generate the backing track for Coldcut's collaboration with

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Three further singles were released from the album including the Top 75 hit "True Skool" with

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Coldcut returned with the single "Everything Is Under Control" at the end of 2005, featuring

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where Black visited as a customer. The first collaboration between the two artists was "

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and Selena Saliva. Coldcut's cut 'n' paste method on the album was compared to that of

850: 808: 688: 604: 597: 531:", which became another UK Top 20 hit in August as well as reaching No. 21 on the U.S. 516: 459: 436: 354: 254: 4743: 5380: 4951: 2387: 2085: 1608: 1423: 1349: 1272: 1240: 1209: 1189: 1174: 1129: 1116: 1050: 1042: 1001: 986: 957: 585: 561: 553: 549: 504:

also helped Coldcut with this record. The duo had another top hit in September with "

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In 2006, Coldcut performed an A/V set based on "Music for 18 Musicians" as part of

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Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Bush, John; Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2001).

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Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Bush, John; Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2001).

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Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Bush, John; Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2001).

1469: 4848: 4575:"Beyond Listening: Ninja Tune Launches Ninja Jamm, Opens Artists to Mobile Remix" 1286:

Also in 2008, Coldcut was asked to remix the theme song for British cult TV show

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machine in 1992, arguably the first complete purpose-designed multimedia system.

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version of the album. This continued Coldcut and Hex's pioneering of the use of

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As the duo started to enjoy critical and commercial success, their debut album

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for two simultaneous customised installations at the O2 Wireless Festivals in

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followed in September and also made the Top 40. The fourth album by Coldcut,

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In 1997, Matt Black - alongside Cambridge based developers Camart - created

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Making Music with Samples: Tips, Techniques & 600+ Ready-to-use Samples

387:". The innovation of "Say Kids..." caused More and Black to be heralded by 304:) were produced by Coldcut in the early '90s, and composed of instrumental 5193:

DJ Award for Ambient, Chill Out, Down Tempo and Eclectic, Experimental DJ

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KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story of a London

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KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story Of A London

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After their success with Lisa Stansfield, Coldcut signed with her label,

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