Sound Mirrors
Label: Ninja Tune
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Sound Mirrors

The once low-profile Ninja Tune label’s impressive reputation as home to acts like Kid Koala, Amon Tobin and, more recently, jazz-patchworkers Skalpel can be traced straight back to its two high-profile founders: Jonathan More and Matt Black, the DJ duo best known as Coldcut.

When not neck-deep in label operations, More and Black have managed to carve their names into production history books over the years, from their infamous reworking of Eric B. & Rakim’s “Paid in Full” and their well-received 1989 album debut What’s That Noise? to their acclaimed live-set audiovisuals and the VJamm software they developed to generate them.

Sound Mirrors, the duo’s latest studio album, finds Coldcut still at the peak of their genre-spanning powers, with a wide variety of forward-looking production work and head-scratching collaborations that redefine the boundaries of beat-futurism.

Of all the guests featured on Sound Mirrors (poet Amiri Baraka, the multitalented Saul Williams) the dancehall cut with Roots Manuva should have won the opening slot, rather than the rock-oriented and over-the-top “Everything Is Under Control” with Jon Spencer and MC/lecturer/essayist Mike Ladd. On “True Skool,” Roots Manuva’s celebratory call to the dance floor rolls over playful percussion of multiple origins, stabs of synths and a relentless head-nodding rhythm.

The subsequent “Man in a Garage” rests on a bed of downtempo chirps and beats and a Donovan-esque (minus the lyrics about forests and dwarves) vocal delivery from John Matthias. While there are a couple of skippable tracks on Sound Mirrors, there’s a breathtaking consistency (even on wildly different tracks) that reveals contemporary proof of Coldcut’s proficiency in both tag-team production and jaw-dropping atmospherics.

Few artists other than Coldcut could lay claim to an album that features both Saul Williams’ poetry – an affecting spoken-word guest spot on “Mr. Nichols” – and moments of ambient instrumental triumph like the soaring title track’s use of pizzicato strings and looming upright bass. And that’s why, more than 15 years after revolutionizing modern electronic music, these two are still clearly at the top of their game.

This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2006.