About
Also known as: Colcut, Cold Cut
Matt Black and Jonathan More have been shaking up dance music since the mid 1980s, when their cut and paste approach to sampling helped establish what electronic music in the UK could even sound like. Their 1987 remix of Eric B. and Rakim's "Paid in Full" is a landmark piece of work, threading in an Ofra Haza vocal and looping rhythms that later became a blueprint for breakbeat, while pushing hip hop into the UK mainstream in a way nobody had managed before. Singles like "Doctorin' the House" with Yazz and "People Hold On" with Lisa Stansfield gave both singers their commercial break, and the Chemical Brothers have cited Coldcut's "Beats + Pieces" as the very first big beat record. Beyond their own releases, Coldcut founded Ninja Tune in London, an independent label that became a genuine hub for leftfield electronic music, nurturing acts like the Herbaliser, Funki Porcini and DJ Vadim. Their weekly radio show Solid Steel, which started in 1987, has become a cult institution in underground electronic music. Albums like "Let Us Play" pushed them toward trip hop territory, while their ongoing interest in combining music with video and multimedia technology has always set them apart from their peers.
