So, album number four for Jon More and Matt Black. It’s actually been eight years since their last studio release, but well, they have been running Ninja Tune, Big Dada, and creating VJamm, their proprietary audio/visual mixing software, among many other things in the meantime.
And it doesn’t really matter how long you’ve been away, if when you return you make it worthwhile for everybody. And that’s certainly the case with Sound Mirrors, an incredibly broad, often intense, and enjoyable listen. Coldcut have made the best album of their long and illustrious career. Their production has never sounded better, their ideas have never been more various or more interesting, they've never had such a great cast of guests and then integrated them into their sound so well.
The duo of Jonathan More and Matt Black are some of the most innovative of electronic music in the last twenty years, combining their love of synthesizers, borrowed sound, and modern technology to create music that is interactive on many levels. Their love of different styles and carefully selected sounds has been their trademark, and after a brief departure they have returned with Sound Mirrors.
The group understand the need for balance in their music, and with Sound Mirrors they create songs where the only goal is to listen, dance, and groove. “Walk In My Shoes” fits into those guidelines, with hints of Chicago house and African rhythms pushing vocalist Robert Owens’s lyrics about the harsh realities of the world to another level. In many ways it resembles the disco of yesterday that seems glorious on the surface, yet reveals a layer of consciousness underneath.
Another Coldcut trademark is that consciousness, which for the average listener is merely on the surface. That need to teach and reach can be heard throughout the album, whether it’s from collaborators like Saul Williams, Mike Ladd, Jon Spencer, Annette Peacock, Roots Manuva, or Amiri Baraka, or from the music which they put into the machine, ranging from soulful dance numbers to the audio equivalent of traveling on the paths of rhythm.
In other words, Sound Mirrors are musical reflections of life, pieced together in a manner that is comforting to those who understand the lack of limits in electronic music. Just as people around the world are different, so is their music, which can motivate the jaded hip-hop head to head nod, to tranquil instrumentals which create epiphany, bringing the listener to tears. The diversity throughout the album is never unsettling, it becomes more about the journey and the goal rather than the metaphorical bumpiness of the ride. The Chemical Brothers, Jazzanova, DJ Shadow, and Madlib are proof of what Coldcut has proven many times over, in that there is always warmth, depth, and perception in the machine, even when the world seems very cold. Welcome to the church of what’s happening now. |