Interview with Coldcut

You're listening to r4nt.com. Today we're lucky enough to be talking to Matt Black from Coldcut. Matt, who used to be a computer programmer, along with ex-art teacher Jonathan Moore, make up the Coldcut sound. They first came to light back in the late 80s with their breakthrough remix of Eric B and Rakim's "Paid in Full," which later went on to go gold.

They've come a long way since then. Outside of releasing several albums they've also partaken in countless collaborations, as well as pioneered the now infamous Solid Steel radio show, which continues to air to this day. Lastly, Coldcut is also responsible for having created the Ninja Tune record label, which now houses such talents as DJ Food, Mr. Scruff, The Coup, Wagon Christ, Bonobo, Funki Porcini, Saul Williams, Sixtoo, The Herbaliser, and countless others.

I first caught wind of Coldcut back in '97 when they collaborated with DJ Krush and DJ Food in the creation of the now legendary Cold Krush Cuts album. However, their last full featured set was back in the late 90s with Let Us Play. I've recently had the opportunity to check out their new album, Sound Mirrors, and it's great to finally hear Coldcut doing what they do best again.

As of January 30th — or February 21st for those here in Canada — their long-anticipated album will finally hit the streets. Anyway, Matt, thank you so much for being able to spend some time with us today. How about we start things off by letting us know a little bit about how the album came together?

Well, it's our first record for eight years, which seems like quite a long time, but luckily, being independent operators, we don't have to follow the normal kind of sausage-machine timetable of the music business — which can sometimes seem a bit like an album, tour, or greatest hits, by.

So Jon and I have had the luxury of a sort of more organic, slow, sustainable development. We've spent the last eight years doing remixes and art installations and software development and websites and radio shows and radio plays and various types of experimentation and reading and learning and having human experiences — all of which are fabric strands we weave into the fabric to make something new. We think we've achieved a step forward with Sound Mirrors from our previous work, and most of the people we've spoken to seem to think they get it and that we're on the right track.

Yeah, after listening to the album a few times, I was really taken back by how good it actually sounds. It was a really pleasant surprise to hear the progression you guys have taken since your last release. It's always interesting to see how one can reinvent themselves, especially after such time between releases. Anyway, speaking of which, you guys have recently relaunched the Coldcut website. It seems like such an artistic piece, and a lot of design and thought seems to have been put into it. I was just wondering how it all came together, and how involved you guys were during the process of branding this new look to match a new sound.

Well, it's a long time now since the web first came into existence, and I got interested in a fairly heavy stage and did actually learn basic HTML and put the first sort of Ninja Tune site together, which was a long time ago now — a good sort of age, if not 10 years ago. Since then, things have got a lot more complex, so like other things, we've sort of found other people who are particularly specialized and expert in their field to help us with it. So Coldcut didn't actually design or write the new sites. We've worked with a company called Klapper, who do a lot of Ninja Tune stuff, and we've had an ongoing relationship with them over the years. We used to share a building with them actually, in the old days of Ninja Tune.

And as for the look and feel of the website, a lot of that has come from the artwork for the album. It's always good when you can actually have a coherent feel between the different graphic stylistic elements behind a product. In this case, Nigel Peake is a young graphic designer who we've worked with for the first time. It's actually his first ever proper commercial job, I think. We had a sort of rough brief — certain things that we wanted — when we were looking around for someone to work with, who wanted a new Coldcut logo. We had a few ideas about that but nothing definite, and he was the person who took those and produced some ideas, which everyone here went, "Wow, yeah, we like it." He was actually found for us by Strictly Kev, who's half of DJ Food, and who's the guy who's done most of Ninja Tune's graphics over the last 10 years. The website is a sort of dynamic version of the album artwork, and I think Klapper has done a really good job in making it as dynamic and interesting and deep and odd as Coldcut-like.

Yeah, it's definitely a fun experience to go through the website and check out all the artwork associated to both the site and the new album. You can really see how the brand got represented across both these mediums. While looking through the website I managed to catch a few of your biweekly podcasts, and I can't help but think back to your roots with the Solid Steel radio shows. I'm curious to know your thoughts regarding this new medium, and what sort of influence do all the new technologies such as iTunes, RSS, and whatnot present to you, and even Ninja Tune in general?

I think it's like most things — it has a good side and a bad side to it. I mean, if people just download podcasts and then don't ever buy any music, that would be a sad thing from the point of view of a record company and a recording artist. But in terms of a sort of promotional medium and opportunity to get more people into what you're doing and distribute what you're doing, I think it's great.

We always sort of pitch ourselves as kind of the alternative — a different way of doing things to the mainstream. And it's true to say that in the past, the media have largely been under the control of a few — really only a handful of sort of lobbies and interest groups and power bases. The net has been a big step forward in democratizing that. I think it's rather excellently ironic and hilarious that what was invented really as a military installation has become something that brings democracy and breaks the monopoly of the power groups in a lot of important ways. Of course, actually getting yourself noticed on the web — unless you've got the muscle to really promote yourself in ways that, in some ways, are quite similar and conventional to the ways in which people and corporations have publicized themselves in the past — can be quite difficult, but it is possible to do it with imagination.

It's a bit like when Coldcut made our first record. We made a sort of limited edition artifact, which was only available in a few places. But we knew that in those few places, quite a few of the tastemakers and really dedicated people tended to hang out. So there's always a way to get yourself noticed. And in summary, I think that the ability to netcast is a very good thing. Some of the projects we've done over the years, like PirateTV.net — a website we started a few years ago really to teach people how to do netcasting themselves — does turn them into this quite well.

Being able to broadcast your music is a bit like the blog, isn't it? It's a way that people can personally express themselves and their interest, and if they've got enough character and enough energy in that, they can probably get noticed and build up a reputation which may be even useful. A pop star is someone who's managed to negotiate their neuroses into a marketable character. So the web provides a medium by which the underground has broken the monopoly of people's attention, which the conventional media had a strangle hold on before.

That's really interesting that you went into that. I was just about to ask you regarding blogs and online magazines, such as our own, and how they affect a new form of mass media without the control, so to speak, of Big Brother or the large corporations that filter what we get to hear on a daily basis. But I think you covered that quite well.

An interesting phenomenon there, which I'd call "art life," is the sort of ability to take your life and make it into art and present it. Whether it's music, DJing, podcasts, news, comedy, cartoons, painting, whatever — you can take your life, take your interests, make them into stuff, and use it to distribute that and see if you can interest people in it. I think it's quite a revolution, really.

That also brings up an interesting point — the ability to easily share information and create new things, with the potential of said things turning into a new style of art. Which brings me to ask you about VJing, in which I've heard a lot about yourself being one of the pioneers of video DJing. I see that you've actually gone out and created these software packages and whatnot. Could you perhaps explain a little bit regarding this new art form, and where do you think VJing is going here in the future?

I mean, video DJing is a perfectly reasonable term for it. It's not one that I've used before, but it actually describes it pretty well. But then so does VJing, or eclectic methods to call themselves DVJs. Basically, the idea that making music and spinning music, presenting music to people, can be expanded to making music and images. Really, what we're talking about then is film, which is probably the most powerful, sophisticated art form that humanity has come up with so far — with the possible exception of virtual reality, which is still in its infancy, really. A lot of people have experienced the fun and the satisfaction in messing around with music and mixing music. We've taken that as a model and applied that to mixing and manipulating and performing with sound and image.

It's easy to sort of spool on. But in this case, I think a picture with a sound is worth a thousand words. And we've gone all along the way to try and make the tools available to people, so that they can have a go themselves and see if they think what we're talking about is more work, or if they can find something of interest to themselves.

So with VJamm — which is the software we've developed to actually do this ourselves — that's actually available to the general public now. We've just released a piece of software called VJamm 3. It's PC only. It's at vjamm.com — V-J-A-M-M dot com — and you can download a free demo of it. There'll be a demo of it also on Sound Mirrors, which is sort of putting the other facet of what Coldcut is interested in. Just as well as music, we're also interested in tools to make art, including audio-visual composition. With that, you get a set of clips to enable you to — I call them Video Break Beats, by analogy with the Hip Hop DJ's break beats. All you need is a PC to run it on. And you can get in there and start experimenting with what I call scratch montage. I think a few seconds of messing around with that will probably give most people the bug for it.

I know we've been on a bit of a stint here talking about technology, but I was also curious to know whether you've ever played with some of these new DJing equipment, such as Final Scratch, where you play with digital music — the interfaces, the pre-pressed pieces of vinyl — or even better yet, what are your thoughts regarding analog versus digital?

Yeah, I'm familiar with Final Scratch. It's not something I actually use, because for me it's not really any different to my preferred tool of choice for spinning music, which is the scratchable CD players like the Pioneer CDJ-1000. I was in Ibiza a few years ago and I DJ'd on those, and when I got back to the UK I bought a couple, and that's what I've been using ever since. I haven't really touched vinyl for quite a while now because the advantages of digital scratching are pretty humongous. Final Scratch is cool, as I say, but I'm more interested in audio-visual scratching.

Right, right.

So basically what these things all represent is something we've been going on about for a few years, which is taking the techniques which we painstakingly evolved for vinyl manipulation. As vinyl inevitably slides further into the past — and I love my vinyl collection as much as anyone else, although I've shaved it down quite a lot, but I'm still looking at racks and racks of my favorite records as I speak to you, and those records, a lot of them, I'm not going to get rid of because they have such personal history for me. At least I want to keep a few thousand in case my son ever gets into vinyl DJing at some point in the future. However, digital technology offers me a lot more possibilities for manipulation and creativity. That's my take on it.

So I've moved more to digital technology, both with the tools we've designed ourselves, like VJamm, and also things like the Pioneer DVJ-X1, which enables you to scratch DVDs, and the custom mixers that we've developed so that you can pan and fade audio-visual material with one cross-fade movement.

I don't get involved in holy wars — not Mac versus PC, not vinyl versus CD. It's individual choice. But as far as my individual choice goes, I'm interested in digital audio-visual technology, and that's what we're developing, that's what we're using, and it's a funky, fresh, fun area, and I recommend anyone who gives it a go will agree with me on that.

I've really enjoyed watching some of the Ninja Tune videos over the past while, and I hope to see more of that sort of stuff in the near future. Granted, I'm sure there's nothing like checking out a live show, and I actually hope to get out to UK sometime this year to come watch and listen to some of the great stuff being played out there.

Where are you calling from?

I'm actually calling from our head office here in Calgary, Alberta.

It's a great advantage of the web that a few years ago, if you wanted to get certain obscure tracks or have the latest kit, you really had to be living in London or Tokyo or somewhere like that. But actually, with access to the net, you're in as good a position as I am to keep up with the latest stuff, and I think that's really good.

Yeah, for sure. Definitely cross that divide, because I know when I first got introduced to the Coldcut sound, it was actually through your collaboration with DJ Krush.

Oh, yes.

With Cold Krush Cuts, which is actually one of my old school favourites. Granted, I guess it's not that old when you consider you started almost ten years before that was released, but it was definitely one of my favourite albums of the day. I'm a huge fan of Krush, but having listened to that, I've become a huge fan of yours as well. It's actually been quite the honour to talk with you today.

Oh, I appreciate your support, mate. You know, it's been nice talking to a lot of journalists over the last few weeks doing promotion, because generally — almost actually without exception — they're people who are into the culture. You're into it. You've been following it. You're actual fans and users yourself of these materials and these ideas. So to get the reactions from you and say, as I think I mentioned earlier, "Yes, we think you're on the right track. We can see this is a step forward, and we're still behind you" — that's a real boost. Because no one really wants to work in isolation just by themselves. We might say, "Oh, we just do what we do and fuck quite a lot of things," but I certainly don't think like that. I need support and a bit of appreciation. I think we ought to do that.

For sure, for sure. So yeah, that's about it for today. I think we've covered a fair bit of ground, but unless you have anything else you'd like to tell our readers about — or if you perhaps have any plans for any North American tours here in the future?

There'll be an American tour coming up — a North American tour. North America is one of our key territories. Of course, we resisted the temptation to establish a Ninja office in LA or New York. If we had, we'd probably be out of business. But we just run Ninja North America from Montreal, and Jeff Way is the guy who runs that. The Ninjas out there — respect to him and all his staff for fighting the good fight. And Ninja, 100% independent. Ninja Tune. It's a struggle, but we love it, and we keep on with it, so keep with us.

Thanks for tuning in to r4nt.com.