Podcast 316: Matt Black (Coldcut, Ninja Tune)

Art + Music + Technology

I'm very happy to offer this interview. Matt Black has been at the front lines of a lot of efforts: early cut-up based dance tracks as Coldcut (if you don't know it, you've *got* to check out Doctorin' The House...), some ground-breaking software development to support their live shows (both audio and visuals) and the development of Ninja Jamm and their newest app: JammPro.

I didn't want to push Matt into just talking about Coldcut History, but it turns out that so many of the decisions about other work was based out of the Coldcut experience - so we ended up getting into it by default. But we also learned a lot about both Matt's personal tech journeys as well as the various collaborations that he's pulled together over the years. There're some interesting stories - and interesting results - that came out of Matt and Jon's efforts.

You will want to learn more after listening to this interview. Probably the best place to start is coldcut.net, which is kind of ground central for the music, AV, apps, Live devices and political vision of the group. We spent a bit of time talking about JammPro; if you are into iOS music-making, it's worth checking out as a powerful way to work with realtime loop manipulation.

Also, there is a bit of additional content on my Patreon site; jump over there to hear Matt rave about Puredata, how he sees the open source landscape, and catch a challenge he has for the community.

Enjoy!