Coldcut

Matt Black and Jon More (aka Coldcut) are part of the festival furniture. Having single-handedly pioneered an entire live genre of their own, with mind-blowing audio visual shows accompanying their experimental twist on electro and hip-hop, the Ninja Tune founders are veterans of the field disco circuit. Having recently released the critically acclaimed studio album 'Sound Mirrors', the pair are currently embarking on a massive festival tour that will be taking in Lovebox, Benicassim, The Big Chill, WOMAD, Sziget, Summer Sundae, Pukkelpop, Leeds and several more - all within the space of a month! The first to admit that they're not spring chickens, VF caught up with Matt Black to find out what lies in store - and just how the hell they do it...

Virtual Festivals: You're probably the hardest working festival performers this summer. How and why?
Matt Black: "Just because it's nice to do festivals in the UK. We did the Coachella festival in California earlier in the year and there just wasn’t enough mud, which was very disappointing."

VF: So you like getting your feet dirty?
MB: "Yeah you’ve got to love getting down and getting dirty. I have a great pair of wellies which never leave my camper van."

VF: Prior to the release of latest album ‘Sound Mirrors’, Coldcut have been fairly quiet. Where have you been?
MB: "We’ve just been boddling around, weaving in different strings to our bow, to mix a metaphor there. That includes computer game sound tracks, art installations, remixes, productions, radio shows and collaborations with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the BBC and stuff like that. So there has been plenty going on, we just haven’t been trumpeting it as loud as we might have done."

VF: So you’ve been stealthy - like a true Ninja?!
MB: "Yeah that’s right. We’ve been playing lots of funky events of all different sorts, from you know, 18,000 people in Japan to a handful of people at Buddhafields. I like to have a diversity of experience, it gives you more to work off."

VF: The new album is obviously a Coldcut record, but at the same time it is quite a departure from your previous releases. What inspired the change of perspective?
MB: "Well, I think if you look back at our early records we always used vocals, whether they were samples from spoken word records, or a rap accapella, or there were vocalists like Junior Reid and Lisa Stansfield. So I think that interest in songs has always been there. With the Ninja Tune family we’ve gone off on the abstract trip-hop and mixing the visuals in and we thought it would be a good challenge to try and make some songs that people could sing along with, rather than just fat beats and interesting noises. Anyone with a copy of Ableton [music production software] can crank out pretty excellent abstract tracks nowadays so it means we’ve got to step the game up and writing songs is one way to do it."

VF: Will there be any lighter waving at festivals when the crowd are singing along to your songs?
MB: "Mobile phones are today’s lighter I think you’ll find!"

VF: And of course you used mobile phones in your ‘CCTV’ project (where fans send in clips filmed on their mobiles to be compiled and edited at a later date). The Beastie Boys have done a similar thing and turned it into a film, haven’t they?
MB: "Yeah, I went to the launch of it the other day. It’s called ‘Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That!’ It’s a good idea, very much a long the same lines [as CCTV]. It was all about realizing that we’ve got a very creative fan bass who are people that like to do stuff themselves. They provide a lot of useful information and energy into what we do, so it’s getting that kind of two-way communication going rather than just: ‘We’re the producer, you’re the consumer, just play it from A – B and give us your money’. We want to garden something a bit more interesting than that."

VF: Have you been pleased with the response to your new offering? I imagine it has taken some of the more hardcore Coldcut/Ninja Tune fans by surprise…
MB: "I think unless we were surprising and even making a certain proportion of people angry we wouldn’t feel we were doing our job. The reviews were pretty much unanimously very positive. That was luck I suppose. I think we framed it right and we’re very pleased to have got such a good response. In terms of our audience some of them may have fallen off the edge but I think we’ve gained a lot of other fans as well. Looking on our MySpace site there’s quite a range of people there, all the way up. It would be absurd if we were just appealing to 30 or 40 year old blokes but looking at MySpace that’s not actually what’s happening, so we’ve spread out a little bit."

VF: The new direction will obviously affect your live shows. How will it come across?
MB: "Well, we’ve done quite a few shows with guests from the album, but actually it also works very well with us doing it with an electronic presentation. We’ve developed a way of having the vocalists as video acapellas which we can scratch and manipulate as one does with vinyl acapellas so that’s a bit more true to the DJ background. But we usually have one or two MCs with us, we’ve been doing a lot of gigs with Juice Aleem and also with Mike Ladd, two Big Dada [Ninja Tune sister imprint] artists. That’s really good as well, to focus the connection with the crowd. It varies. We can do it either way."

VF: Is it fun having people to interact with on stage rather than being dance music’s traditional anonymous guy stood behind stacks of Starship Enterprise style equipment?
MB: "It is, but I think our audience know that we’re not a normal rock band and they don’t expect that from us. We did pioneer the DJ/laptop/visual performance thing and I think people are happy with that. The thing is it’s good to show that we’re human, that we sweat, and that we are actually present and performing live…we’re not just pressing “play.” But what we’re doing is a new type of electronic performance and it does require some serious concentration, so we look quite serious at the time because we’re really concentrating on what we’re doing, keeping those plates spinning y’know?"

VF: How do you and Jon More divide the responsibilities between yourselves when on stage? Who does what?
MB: "On stage it generally divvies up that Jon is doing the audio end and I’m doing the audio-visual material. We basically have a few different streams, some of them are audio, some of them just visual and some of them are audio-visual. So there are actually four of us on this big bank of kit producing this kind of live cinema." 

VF: Ninja Tune has been going since 1991. 15 years. Are you proud of what you’ve achieved?
MB: "I’m proud that we are alternative and independent. I’m not into just being in the ghetto of the underground, a lot of people think that that’s the only place to be. There’s a lot of snobbishness and closed minds in the underground as well, so I’m not all that interested in those categories, but there needs to be an alternative to music as commodity."

VF: A lot of independent labels and outfits fold after not so long…labels like Cup of Tea, who were once up there with Ninja Tune, are now sadly no longer with us…
MB: "Well, our fans support us and understand that we’re doing something a bit different. Each day is a gift, there’s nothing actually assured for tomorrow, so we keep on doing the best we can and have faith that it will survive. The music business is extremely tough at the moment, all that downloading and CD copying does have an effect, more on the majors…but when the majors are feeling the pinch they tend to squeeze the shops and the distributors and then they tend to squeeze the smaller, independent operators, so it is does have a kind of rather horrid knock-on effect. But we’re still here."

VF: What are your thoughts on the current music scene?
MB: "If you look on the web there’s all kinds of people popping up doing their own thing and it’s much easier to get your music published and distributed because you can do that yourself now. And that’s a huge step forward. On the downside of that, it’s a lot more difficult to get noticed because many more people are doing it, but I think, y’know, let go of the attitude of thinking that it’s going to make you a million quid necessarily and just concentrate on having fun with your mates making some music. That’s a really healthy attitude and you’ll probably succeed perhaps in a way that you didn’t necessarily think."

VF: In a fight between the Ninja Tunes posse and Transformers (robots in disguise) who would win?
MB: "The Ninjas would skilfully win by turning ourselves into diaphanous sheets to avoid confrontation, into diaphanous sheets of pure musical texture, which I think our Transformer friends haven’t learnt yet. I’ve been watching lots of ‘Kung Fu’, the old 70s series with David Carradine, and there’s plenty of good ninja tips on how to win confrontations in alternative ways there, so I’d recommend that anyone who’s seeking some tips."

VF: If you could collaborate with one musician who is no longer with us who would it be?
MB: "Amadeus Mozart."

VF: The world is about to be hit by a massive meteor, thereby ending all life on planet earth, but Coldcut want to keep on creating general sound oddities, to which planet or solar system would you relocate?
MB: "Mmmm……[long, pensive pause]….mmm….I think it would have to be Saturn, to meet up with Sun Ra." 

Before they do escape to another planet, you can see Coldcut at various UK and European festivals throughout the summer. Their album 'Sound Mirrors' is out now. Click on the links below for more details.
 
www.coldcut.net
www.ninjatune.net