Talking Yin and Yang with Coldcut
Matt - Speak up mate, cause you're a little bit faint.
SAB - Well, it's a really crap phone. I've been meaning to buy a new
phone. It's first thing in the morning here, so I apologize if I'm a
little bit braindead.
Matt - Well, go on, blow my mind.
SAB - Let's talk about Atomic Moog 2000" -- I read in one review about
how someone said it sounded like something from 87. But it seems funny
that people haven't dealt with this Atomic issue for like ten years?
Matt - Well, these are two things -- do you mean the style of music is
from 87, or the whole style of the cut-up?
SAB - The whole cut-up.
Matt - Well, it's just a style that we love going back to Steinski's
original records. Just using the spoken word. It has turned out to be
one of our most danceable tracks, so obviously people like it in the
clubs. In a way, it is not our most incredibly state-of-the-art composed
track, not like the Jello Biafra track, which were actually made using our
own random funk generating software. It is put together in a fairly
conventional way. You know those books Incredibly Strange Music on
Re/Search?
SAB - Yeah, yeah.
Matt - I bought those in Barcelona and I took them on holiday to Portugal,
and Pete Lawrence of the Big Chill had a bunch of easy listening tapes,
and there was a lot of that in the books, and I started thinking about it.
And I thought of this term -- it's not rare groove, it's >rare moog.'
People getting into the rare electronic records, especially the funky
ones. When we got back I communicated this to John, and then he went off
to Canada, and found an amazing shop where he bought loads and loads of
the rare moog stuff. And we got loads of breakbeats which no one has else
had used, and so we came back and worked that into AAtomic Moog.@ So
that's the story of how it came into being. Obviously at the time the
French nuclear testing was going down, and that seemed worth commenting
on, really.
SAB - Yeah, I think it's fairly fucked with these nuclear weapons. I've
been studying up on it a lot lately, and it's getting worse. There's
nuclear spills, nuclear leaks everywhere.
Matt - Oh yeah, the Russians have suddenly said, >Oh by the way loads of
warheads are missing.' I'm sure shit goes missing all the time. The boys
who are buying that stuff plan to use it, I reckon, or are prepared to.
SAB - The best thing I've heard lately about these drug dealers buying
Russian submarines to transport.
Matt - The world is becoming a much much more dangerous place in every
way. So unless we can find a bit of piece and love, I'm not altogether
sure that we're going to make it, and that would be a bit sad, considering
all the potential the human race has got.
SAB - Yeah exactly, it's fairly mad. It seems like -- well, I went to
this exhibit at the Barbican Gallery in London last year -- the Jam show,
you know what I'm talking about right? I can hardly remember it because
it was so long ago. But there was all this stuff about machines being the
Gods of the future, and stuff about being posthuman. Could you speak on
that?
Matt - Yeah, we can talk about that. Actually, the post-human vibe is
largely the work of Rob Pepperrell, who is in the Hex part of the
collective, and he's written the book, Post-Human Condition, that deals
with a lot of these ideas. We can talk about that, but you are going to
have to speak up, cause I'm losing you?
SAB - So what exactly is meant by the term post-human, then?
Matt - It deals with the fact that the definition of what it means to be
human is changing. It's becoming more difficult to tell the difference
between living things and artificial things, artificial life, and
artificial intelligence research areas. To spell it out, in the future,
it's going to be very difficult to tell what is human and what is
artificial. There's people getting into body modification. The interface
between humans and technology is breaking down. Which means that we have
to have a radical re-think of our definitions. I love Philip K. Dick, the
writer. I think he addressed quite a few of those issues, quite
presciently, in a lot of his writing. What is real? How can you tell you
what is real? How can you tell what is human and what is not? And if a
human acts in an inhuman fashion, then they're not really human, they're a
machine. And if an artificial construct acts in a human way, then it is a
human. That's what it comes down to, in his opinion.
SAB - Now it seems like with the song ACloned Again@ on the album compared
with the Barbican exhibit -- it seems like the album track is much more
pessimistic, whereas the other is very optimistic?
Matt - Um, I'm pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. I think
that's the only sane view to have really. It's like technology. It's
either the greatest force that Big Brother has ever had to control us down
to more tightly set rules, cogs in the machine, where one could never have
the freedom to vibrate loose without the big boys being aware of it. Or
it's the answer to our problems, and it will connect people and empower
people, allow people to communicate and educate and create. And that will
result in a kind of huge renaissance of the spirit, and that will take us
to the next step of evolution. Those are two equally valid views, and one
can find as much evidence for the one as the other.
SAB - It seems to be going both ways now doesn't it?
Matt - I think it always does, and that's probably what is meant by yin
and yang. One never totally finds Heaven. Or the Nazis will never rule
forever. They'll always get overthrown as the cycle turns around. It is
possible to have some personal freedom and happiness in times of great
unrest and problems.
SAB - Yeah, I think that's something really important to remember I've
found in my studies. When you find so much really dark and mad stuff, you
just have to realize this stuff is quite horrible, but it's not going to
do any good if you get horrible minded, too.
Matt - All the terrible things that have happenned in History are equally
balanced by the incredibly magnificent march of evolution and the species.
It is possible that we are the only intelligent lifeform in the universe,
and maybe it is our destiny to take it to the next stage and reach the
stars, and cross the universe.
SAB - Well, I was thinking just yesterday about this book I came across by
this Russian (Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita), and he wrote it just
as he was dying, knowing it wouldn't be published, and it didn't come out
till 25 years after he was dead. It just seems like artists used to
really care about what happenned after they were dead, but you don't get
that sense of things now. Everyone is out just to make money.
Matt - Yeah, the spiritual base of life is being devalued pretty badly.
It could be pretty depressing. I don't know but then again, that's true
on some levels, but on other levels. Like people complain about children
not being able to read and not being very literate, and getting all their
information from the television. And although television programming is
pretty terrible most of the time, it can be an incredible tool for
communicating information, and actually lots of kids these days do know a
fuck lot about the world. They may have not experienced it directly, but
their knowledge and the information that they're dealing with is actually
much greater than that of the generation before.
SAB - Yeah, TV does have some mad stuff on it sometimes.
Matt - Yeah, we just need to sort of remix television. That's partly what
we're trying to do with our live shows. And we're trying to show that a
small, independent company can actually make entertaining products, and do
what you want to do creatively at the same time, and make a living by
that. And I think when that gets applied to television in terms of
audio/visual construction in the way that it has been to DIY music ethic
that will really be a step forward.
SAB - Yeah, it's quite impressive. I don't actually have the computer
capability to check the CD Rom, but it comes with 8 videos or something.
It's quite stunning that you without spending -- well, maybe you did spend
incredible amounts of money ...
Matt - No, we didn't spend an incredible amount of money at all. The
whole CD Rom was done for about a twentieth of what it might have costed a
normal company. In fact, there is no normal company that could have made
it -- only our collective could have produced it. I feel happy that we're
pushing things, by giving people more, and including the CD Rom for free
with the album. We actually won a little argument with the people who do
the charts over here. Because they initially wanted to exclude the album
from the album charts, because it came with a free CD Rom. So we
negotiated with them, and put one audio track on the CD-Rom, and that
satisfied them. And it actually cleared the way for the requirements for
sort of mixed mode and multimedia products in terms of the music business
charts, which are very important.
SAB - Yeah, it's quite funny. It's almost trying to escape the medium
isn't it? It's like recorded music is no longer what it was.
Matt - Yeah, that's right. I think people want something more. They
don't want stuff like Mini-Discs and DATs, because it's just the same
thing, just music, on yet another format. Especially when lots of people
got the vibe now, and they've perceived correctly that actually CDs aren't
all they were cracked up to be, in terms of quality and there's a bit of
backlash against it. I think the only thing one can do is to try and
provide people with a lot more than they were getting before, some more
dimensions stacked together to see if one can actually fulfill the hype of
generating richer entertainment products.
SAB - Do you think there should be a line divided between music and
entertainment, because there's a big difference between a good piece of
music and a bit of music with some visuals. Do you think there's ever a
time when they should be distinctly separated?
Matt - No, I'm not really concerned with that, because if you want to make
just music, you can do that. And if you want to make a silent film, you
can do that. But if you want to mix them up into some kind of interactive
blender, then you can do that as well. I think people today are
conditioned with a taste for audio/visual stimulation, with a taste for
excitement, and rapid input of stimulus. And that's what we're reaching
for with the kind of cut and paste audio/visual experiments which we're
manifesting on the album.
SAB - With the cut-and-paste audio, it almost makes people rethink how
much information you can get across in a four minute track?
Matt - Absolutely, yeah. We want to blip the people to the max. And
(unclear) information overload, and night up the dance (unclear again).
SAB - Do you ever want to calm down with the information, cause there's
information overload everywhere you go these days?
Matt - Yeah, but perhaps, we're sort of jacking it up to a kind of super,
hyper level, and thus achieve an altered state of consciousness, which
will help people see loads of information for exactly what it is, which is
a product of consumer society just going round faster and faster, like a
person wanking machine.
SAB - Now with cut and paste what do you think are the possibilities of a
defining sound, if you know what I mean that -- so that someone who plays
the CD will know that such and such and group did it? Is this element
still important?
Matt - I think if you look at the artists on our label Ninja Tune, or
listen to what Coldcut have released over the last ten years, then it is
as identifiable as a Rolling Stones is. You have to have the taste or the
ear for dealing, or appreciating, or essaying, analysing, feeling what we
are doing. It's just about how much you listen to stuff. I'm sure I
could get into the most obscure country & western music if I heard it for
long enough in the right circumstances ... I'm probably going to have to
go quite quickly. I'm right in the middle of some stuff. Have you got
quite a bit now? It's actually been quite a good interview.
SAB - I could do with about three more minutes, if you can do that?
Matt - Yeah, okay, let's do that.
SAB - I have two more questions. One, could you discuss what the major
problem with the major labels was?
Matt - Our problems with the major labels are quite well documented. It's
not something I want to dwell on, except to say that after ten years,
starting off and knowing what we were doing, and not really trusting an
external company to understand that. We went through the machine, and
came out pretty mashed up at the other end, but just enough in one piece
to pull ourselves together and realize that the best thing is to be free
and not be owned. I do think it's quite funny when you get independent
charts and awards and so on, and you look at a lot of the companies, and
they're not independent at all. They're either owned, or partly owned
subsidiaries of major companies. And I feel a large company must always
put money first before the actual product.
There seems to be a universal rule. That way lies the ruin for the soul
that is really feeling what they're doing, and trying to find a way for
expression, to keep going, and try to make a living. Which after all is
most people are trying to do. I think if you ask, they'll want to do
such-and-such, and make a living from it.
SAB - So the best advice would be probably to start your own label?
Matt - Yeah, I would say so. You could probably do it better yourself.
It's tough when you start out, because you get an accountant to sort this
out, a lawyer to sort this out, and good people in those types of fields
are very difficult to find. Because the people who really understand you,
and understand what you're doing -- most of those people would want to be
doing it themselves, if they really understood it. The person who
understands it, who's happy to sit back and deal with the more mundane
side is quite rare.
SAB - Yeah, that's a good good point. It's funny that you started the
label in Montreal. Did you not want to go to America, or was it just
because it's cheap rent there?
Matt - It was just more down to Jeff and Phil, who run Ninja North US for
us. They've live in Montreal, and there's a good scene there. With the
size of operations we are, you can operate pretty remotely I think. It's
indicative of the decentralization of business as well. If you've got a
fax, and an e-mail, and a telephone, and an office, you're as good as
anyone really. But that was the case in point with regard to the majors.
There was a possibility of going through a major in the States, or just
continuing to export. We thought we could licence stuff, but we thought
we might as well do it ourselves, if we can find people that are really
into the music, and want to do it for the music, that'll be more on our
own wavelength. So in the long term, we'll be building something for
ourselves rather than someone else. So that's why we went that way.
SAB - Well, when you go to the major labels, you can lose credibility.
They can destroy a career is all I'm trying to say.
Matt - It's getting more difficult to hear. Can we maybe do one more
question, then wrap it up?
SAB - Yeah okay, do you think it makes any difference between analogue
editing and digital editing? Or, which one do you prefer?
Matt - Yeah, analogue/digital -- the mixture is typical of the yin and
yang, and the thrill that one gets from mixing up the opposites. Digital
editing is so fantastic in terms of arranging your head into a non-linear
type place, but analogue can actually force you to think in a more
structured way. Sometimes with digital, there's too many possibilities.
Sometimes with analogue, there's just one that's the result of the errors.
Sometimes with digital it's more clinical and pure sound without any
artifacts at all. They're both just tools, and they can build onto each
other. The more tools you've got, then they can amplify the effects of
the other tools. So if you've got some raw materials, you can work in so
many different ways. So the thing is to step beyond saying, 'I think CDs
are crap and only vinyl is good quality,' and just look at what you want
to do, and see what will let you do that. And there will be, as long as
you keep an open mind to the availability of stuff without closing off.
SAB - Yeah, that's cool. If I ever get this stuff typed up, I'll send a
copy along.
Matt - Yeah, that's great. Have you got this on cassette tape? I'd very
much appreciate a cassette copy, because I'm trying to build up an archive
of some of the interviews I've been doing.
SAB - Yeah, I can get you one. The last thing I was going to say is that
I just saw this English movie last week called Robinson In Space. You
should check it out.
Matt - Yeah, can you write down the reference when you send me the tape.
SAB - Yeah sure.
Matt - Well, thanks very much.
SAB - Yeah, thanks.
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