Coldcut at Gretchen / Saturday, 21.10.2017

True legends Coldcut come to Berlin this October for a live audio-visual show at Gretchen in Kreuzberg. Hot on the heals of their latest record “Outside The Echo Chamber” a collaboration with On-U-Sound, we’re excited to see a rare performance from one of the UKs most innovative electronic musical projects, the masterminds behind Ninja Tunes.

Most people come into music, do the same thing for a few years, slowly sink back into obscurity and spend the rest of their life collecting publishing royalties and re-forming for tribute tours. Their biographies can afford to be quite short – most of us aren’t that interested in golf or angling. The problem with Coldcut is that, despite their veteran status, they act like two unruly children who just won’t sit still. Which is why even a brief trawl through their various activities looks like a large chapter of a big book.

Coldcut are an English electronic music duo composed of Matt Black and Jonathan More. Credited as pioneers for pop sampling in the ‘80s, 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, breaks, jazz, 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 a satellite office in Montreal) 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 Funky Porcini, The Herbaliser and DJ Vadim.