Coldcut: Британиялық электроникалық музыка дуэтінің тарихы

English electronic music duo
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Coldcut are an English electronic music duo composed of Matt Black 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 cut up samples of hip hop, soul, funk, spoken word and various other types of music, as well as video and multimedia. According to Spin, "in '87 Coldcut pioneered the British fad for 'DJ records'". Coldcut's records first introduced the public to pop artists Yazz and Lisa Stansfield, through which these artists achieved pop chart success. In addition, Coldcut has remixed and created productions on tracks by the likes of Eric B & Rakim, James Brown, Queen Latifah, Eurythmics, INXS, Steve Reich, Blondie, the Fall, Pierre Henry, Nina Simone, Fog, Red Snapper, and BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Beyond their work as a production duo, Coldcut are the founders of Ninja Tune, an independent record label in London, England (with satellite offices in Los Angeles and Berlin) with an overall emphasis on encouraging interactive technology and finding innovative uses of software. The label's first releases (the first four volumes of DJ Food Jazz Brakes) were produced by Coldcut in the early '90s, and composed of instrumental hip hop cuts that led the duo to help pioneer the trip hop genre, with artists such as Funki Porcini, the Herbaliser and DJ Vadim.

In 1986, computer programmer Matt Black and ex art teacher Jonathan More were part time DJs on the rare groove scene. More also DJed on pirate radio, hosting the Meltdown Show on Kiss FM and worked at the Reckless Records store on Berwick Street, London where Black visited as a customer. The first collaboration between the two artists was "Say Kids What Time Is It?" on a white label in January 1987, which mixed The Jungle Book's "King of the Swingers" with the break from James Brown's "Funky Drummer". The innovation of "Say Kids " caused More and Black to be heralded by SPIN 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 sampled in "Pump Up the Volume" by MARRS, a single that reached #1 in the UK in October 1987. 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 Solid Steel. The eclectic show became a unifying force in underground experimental electronic music 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 Ofra Haza sample and many other vocal cut ups as well as a looped rhythm which later, when sped up, proved popular in the Breakbeat genre. 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. In 1988, More and Black formed Hex, a self titled "multimedia pop group", with Mile Visman and Rob Pepperell. While working on videos for artists such as Kevin Saunderson, Queen Latifah and Spiritualized, 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. In 1988, Coldcut released Out To Lunch With Ahead Of Our Time, 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. The next Coldcut single, released in February 1988, moved towards a more house influenced style. "Doctorin' the House", which debuted singer Yazz, became a top ten hit, and peaked at No. 6. In the same year, under the guise Yazz and the Plastic Population, they produced "The Only Way Is Up", a cover of a Northern soul song. The record reached No. 1 in the UK in August, and remained there for five weeks, becoming 1988's second biggest selling single. The single "People Hold On" became another UK Top 20 hit. Released in March 1989, it helped launch the career of the then relatively unknown singer Lisa Stansfield. Coldcut and Mark Saunders produced her debut solo single "This Is the Right Time", which became another UK Top 20 hit in August as well as reaching No. 21 on the U. S. Billboard Hot 100 the following year. As the duo started to enjoy critical and commercial success, their debut album What's That Noise? 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 by SPIN as having "somehow found room at the same table for Queen Latifah and Mark E. Smith". The album's track "I'm in Deep" (featuring Smith) prefigured the indie dance guitar breaks crossover of such bands as the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, utilizing Smith's freestyle raucous vocals over an acid house backing, and also including psych guitar samples from British rock band Deep Purple. What's That Noise? reached the Top 20 in the UK and was certified Silver.

Coldcut's second album, Some Like It Cold, released in 1990 on Ahead Of Our Time, featured a collaboration with Queen Latifah 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 BPI "Producer of the Year Award" in 1990. Hex alongside some other London visual experimenters such as iE produced a series of videos for a longform VHS version of the album. This continued Coldcut and Hex's pioneering of the use of microcomputers to synthesize electronic music visuals. After their success with Lisa Stansfield, Coldcut signed with her label, Arista. 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 Philosophy emerged in 1993. Singles "Dreamer" and "Autumn Leaves" (1994) sung by vocalist Janis Alexander were both minor hits but the album did not chart. "Autumn Leaves" had strings recorded at Abbey Road, with a 30 piece string section and an arrangement by film composer Ed Shearmur. The leader of the string section was Simon Jeffes of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Coldcut's insistence on their friend Mixmaster Morris 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. In 1990, whilst on their first tour in Japan (which also featured Norman Cook, who later became Fatboy Slim), Matt and Jon formed their second record label, Ninja Tune, 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. 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. Top Banana 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 characters. 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 CD ROM medium. The Global Chaos CDTV disk (which contained the Top Banana 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 BBC Radio 4, What's Up Doc? on ITV and Reportage on BBC Two. i D Magazine was quoted as saying, "It's like your TV tripping". Coldcut videos were made for most songs, often by Hexstatic, 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 Let Us Play, Coldcut's fourth album, and Let Us Replay, 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. 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 Coldcut's Let Us Play and Let Us Replay, 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 Ninja Jamm, the app Coldcut designed and launched 16 years later. Playtime followed on from Coldcut and Hex's Synopticon installation, developing the auto cutup algorhythm, and using other random processes to generate surprising combinations. Coldcut and Hex performed live using Playtime at the 1st Sonar Festival in 1994. Playtime was also used to generate the backing track for Coldcut's collaboration with Jello Biafra, "Every Home a Prison". In 1994, Coldcut and Hex contributed an installation to the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art. The piece, called Generator, was installed in the Fire Gallery. Generator 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, the right controlling how the images are played. As part of the JAM exhibition of "Style, Music and Media" at the Barbican Art Gallery 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. The year 1996 also brought the Coldcut name back to More and Black, and the pair celebrated with 70 Minutes of Madness, a mix CD that became part of the Journeys by DJ 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 Jockey Slut in 1998. 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 reworking of the early track "More Beats + Pieces" gave them their first UK Top 40 hit since 1989. The album Let Us Play! followed in September and also made the Top 40. The fourth album by Coldcut, Let Us Play! paid homage to the greats that inspired them. Their first album to be released on Ninja Tune, it featured guest appearances by Grandmaster Flash, Steinski, Jello Biafra, Jimpster, The Herbaliser, Talvin Singh, Daniel Pemberton and Selena Saliva. Coldcut's cut 'n' paste method on the album was compared to that of Dadaism and William Burroughs. Hex collaborated with Coldcut to produce the multimedia CD ROM for the album. Hex later evolved the software into the engine that was used on the Let Us Play! world tour. In 1997, Matt Black alongside Cambridge based developers Camart created real time video manipulation 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 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 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. NME was quoted as saying: "Veteran duo Coldcut are so cool they invented the remix now they are doing the same for television." 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 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. In 1999, Let Us Replay! was released, a double disc remix album where Coldcut's classic tunes were remixed by the likes of Cornelius (which was heralded as a highlight of the album, 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 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".