Matt Black is half of legendary DJ duo and multimedia pop group Coldcut, formed in 1987, and founders of Ninja Tune, the UK label. In 2015 Ninja Tune celebrated 25 years as one of the worlds leading electronic music labels and a beacon for the independent music spirit. In 2017 Coldcut celebrated 30 years in electronic music with a string of gigs releases and special projects. A new album is coming in 2020.
Coldcut are known for innovations in DJing, remixing, mashup, VJing, apps and multimedia. Over 28 years they have combined cutting edge artistic expression with positive activist themes in such pieces as Journeys by DJ, People Hold On, Stop This Crazy Thing, Timber, Atomic Moog, Panopticon, Re:volution, Energy Union, Walk a Mile, True Skool, Robbery and many more. Coldcut have worked with a wild range of artists, activists and other groups and luminaries eg Steve Reich, James Brown, Jello Biafra, Saul Williams, Robert Owens, Lisa Stansfield, Crass, Roots Manuva, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Greenpeace, and Avaaz.
In 2011 Matt designed the iOS app Ninja Jamm, Ninjatune's first music app which has had over 500,000 downloads; Matt uses Ninja Jamm to perform, lectures on apps, technology and music, and does workshops on how people can use the app for their own music. In 2017 Coldcut released 2 more apps he designed, Pixi a visual synth, and Robbery a satirical video game. Midivolve, a music software collaboration with Ableton was released July 2017. At Splice festival May 2017 Matt showcased his experiments with Style Transfer, a cutting edge new style of visual processing using AI techniques. Matt collaborated with artist Wolfgang Buttress (the Hive, Kew) for BEAM AV installation Glastonbury 2019. Jamm Pro his latest app will be released in late 2019.
Matt's stated ambition is to 'create positive art, music and spiritual technology to blow the minds of the entire planet and catalyse the advance of cooperative strategies'. He continues to gig, lecture, DJ, VJ, record, make films, develop software and bridge the worlds of technology, club culture, art and activism.
