Coldcut - Sound Mirrors

Genre electronica Publisher Ninja Tune External Links Official Coldcut Website Official Ninja Tune Website

Twenty years is a long time for a DJ duo to have been in business. Jonathan More and Matt Black, who record together as Coldcut, first made their name in the 1980s doing production work for a huge variety of musicians. To me, at least, they're best known for their 1995 mix 70 Minutes of Madness, which surveyed the beatspace of the mid-90s with a practiced ear. In their career, they've traipsed all over the beat atlas, jetting from jungle to hip-hop to dub. Sound Mirrors is their first artist album release since 1997's Let Us Play!, and in some ways it echoes that album: there's a few highlights, a penchant for message songs, and too many tracks that are simply too long.

The album's standout is "True Skool," a lively sound collage based on a gleeful hook, which recalls the Avalanches and Beck, though each of those artists certainly owe more to Coldcut than the other way round. Roots Manuva's deep dance-hall voice toasts the Coldcut style: "Calypso, dance hall, punk step and dub / new wave, old wave, genre define." Sadly, the rest of the record is something of a let-down. There's the cover of the Joe South soul classic "Walk a Mile In My Shoes," with vocals by R&B singer Robert Owens: a soulful lament and plea for tolerance which is too smooth to resonate and lodge itself in the heart. "Mr. Nichols" is a spoken-word satire of talking a suicidal businessman down from a window ledge. Indie rapper Saul Williams' lyrics present a fairly obvious critique of a materialistic strawman over slow, sparse tribal beats, which is about as much fun to listen to as it sounds. Most of the rest of the record's lyrics -- on "Just for the Kick," "Aid Dealer," "This Island Earth," for instance -- are similarly quasi-political, which grates on the ears of those who don't look to music for ethical and political lessons. And, anyway, such lessons are always more easily swallowed if the music is compelling, but Sound Mirrors gets bogged down in midpaced numbers like "A Whistle + A Prayer." This song's vocals, done by Andrew Broder, come in familiar close harmonies, smeared like oil in water, and could be the missing (and unlooked for) link between 311 and Radiohead.

With "Everything's Under Control" there's finally another track worth listening to. Its Jon Spencer-yoweled vocals work well on this anti-Big Brother call to arms, which slips further and further into parody. Old-school rapping is courtesy of Mike Ladd: "Black helicopter, Knights of Malta / Illuminati partners, tower topplers / Vatican taps on the Texas mafia." The chorus of "This Island Earth" glides over an old-school piano-house rhythm that contrasts with the compulsive, forbidding bass-driven music of the verses. A soundscape shaped by upright bass, subdued horns, melancholy strings, and miscellaneous squeaks brings the album to a close. The considered composition and smoothness of this last track remind me that Coldcut certainly know what they're doing in a studio. 70 Minutes Of Madness was an exploration, a cerebral mix that abandoned functionality in favor of inner journey; sadly, the eclecticism here doesn't seem to be as consistently strong or interesting. With Sound Mirrors Coldcut fail again to bring their immense talent to a full-length artist album.