653. Coldcut - What's That Noise? (1989)




















Track Listing

1. People Hold On
2. Fat (Party And Bullshit)
3. I'm In Deep
4. My Telephone
5. Reportage
6. Which Doctor
7. Stop This Crazy Thing
8. No Connection
9. Smoke 1
10. Doctorin' The House
11. What's That Noise

Review

This is probably the only album of originals to have collaborations by Lisa Stansfield and Mark E. Smith in the space of three tracks. That goes to show what a mixed bag we have here, actually it is a mixed bag of very good and pretty bad, and a lot in the middle.

There are some tracks here that are great, the one with Mark E. Smith, I'm In Deep is an obvious example, but My Telephone composed almost completely of telephone noises is another great one, prefiguring the whole 8-bit movement thing.

Then there are real turkeys, and Doctorin' The House and People Hold On are the big stand outs in turkeydom, they are also curiously the most popular songs in the album, just goes to show how shit people's taste is. The collage work here is what is really interesting and it is the sound collages that make this album above mediocre.

Track Highlights

1. I'm In Deep
2. My Telephone
3. Stop This Crazy Thing
4. Which Doctor

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Coldcut first came together in the autumn of 1986. Computer programmer Matt Black carried a tape recording that featured the inception of "Say Kids, What Time Is It?", a track he had made for a Capital Radio mix competition, browsed in the Reckless Records store on Berwick Street, in London. Ex-Art teacher Jonathan More, who worked in the store at the time, listened to the mix, suggesting a separate edit be made of the Jungle Book's "King of the Swingers" - Black had mixed this with the break from James Brown's "Funky Drummer". Using his contacts from his Meltdown Show on Kiss FM and his club night, in January 1987 this mix was released on a white label and "Say Kids, What Time Is It?" became their first single.

My telephone, sorry for the crappy video: