Matthew Cohn, known by the stage name Matt Black, is a British DJ and one half of music duo Coldcut (along with Jonathan More), who founded the Ninja Tune record label. [1]
As a student at New College, Oxford, he was a member of a band called The Jazz Insects, whose first single was played by John Peel in his radio show. [2]
Black is one of the inventors of the VJamm software used in the Coldcut live shows and also co-developed a "granular video synthesizer" titled Granul8. [3] [4] He is also a founding member of the (now defunct) VJ group Hex, and of the VJ group The VJamm Allstars with whom he continues to perform shows and has also worked alongside Crass Agenda as part of the Savage Utopia project.
Cohn is the grandson of the architect and designer Wells Coats. [5]
Coldcut are an English electronic music duo composed of Matt Black and Jonathan More. Credited as pioneers for pop sampling in the 1980s, Coldcut are also considered the first stars of UK electronic dance music due to their innovative style, which featured cut-up samples of hip-hop, soul, funk, spoken word and various other types of music, as well as video and multimedia. According to Spin, "in '87 Coldcut pioneered the British fad for 'DJ records'".
Mixmaster Morris is an English electronica DJ and underground musician who has also recorded as The Irresistible Force. His work in the 1990s blended ambient music and chill-out influences with UK dance styles.
Ninja Tune is an English independent record label based in London with a satellite office in Los Angeles. It was founded by Matt Black and Jonathan More and managed by Peter Quicke and others.
Rodney Hylton Smith, better known by his stage name Roots Manuva, is a British rapper and producer. Since his debut in 1994, he has produced numerous albums and singles on the label Big Dada, achieving commercial success with albums Run Come Save Me and Slime & Reason. He has been described as "one of the most influential artists in British music history." His most recent studio album, Bleeds, was released in October 2015.
Kiss is a British digital radio station owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Kiss Network.
Hot Snakes were an American rock band led by Rick Froberg and John Reis, formed in 1999 in San Diego, California. Reis and Froberg had previously performed together in Pitchfork and Drive Like Jehu, after which Reis found international success with Rocket from the Crypt. Hot Snakes disbanded in 2005, but reunited in 2011.
The Herbaliser is an English jazz hip hop group formed by Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba in London, England during the early 1990s. Although currently releasing on their own label and having previously been signed to !K7 Records, they were one of the best-known acts from the Ninja Tune independent record label. They have released 12 albums, including two DJ mixes: one for Ninja Tune's Solid Steel series and the other for Fabric's Live Mix series. The Herbaliser's album Same As It Never Was was their first release on !K7 Records. Their latest album Bring Out The Sound was released in 2018, on the BBE label.
Hexstatic are an English electronic music duo, consisting of Stuart Warren Hill and Robin Brunson, that specializes in creating "quirky audio visual electro." Formed in 1997 after Hill and Brunson met while producing visuals at the Channel 5 launch party, they decided to take over for the original members of the Ninja Tune multimedia collective Hex that had disbanded around the same time. They soon collaborated with Coldcut for the Natural Rhythms Trilogy, including the critically acclaimed A/V single "Timber".
Klute is the primary recording alias of Tom Withers, a drum and bass producer and DJ from Ipswich, UK. He is also the drummer, vocalist and songwriter of the English hardcore band The Stupids.
Jonathan James, popularly known as Hint, is a musician hailing from Sussex in the UK. His music has been released on independent record labels and his catalogue includes work which has found favour amongst DJs and fans from various underground music scenes.
Solid Steel are a series of DJ mix albums issued on Ninja Tune, an independent record label in the UK.
Pest are a band from South London, formerly signed to Ninja Tune, writing and playing music that mixes elements of funk, electronica, jazz and breakbeat. The band consists of Ben Mallott, Matt Chandler (guitar), Tom Marriott (trombone), Wayne Urquhart (cello) and Vesa Haapanen (drums).
Vadim Alexandrovich Peare, known professionally as DJ Vadim, is a Russian-English DJ and record producer. Born in Saint Petersburg and raised in London, Peare is additionally a promoter, record collector, radio presenter, occasional painter and writer, whose music combines hip hop, soul, reggae and electronica. He previously ran Jazz Fudge.
Hex, or Hex Media, were a London-based multimedia group founded in the early 1990s by artist Robert Pepperell, coder Miles Visman and the DJ duo Coldcut. The group set out to exploit the creative potential of, what was then, the new media technologies of CD-ROM, multimedia, interactive computing, video sampling and portable video projection.
The Qemists are an English electronic rock group, hailing from Brighton, England. They are signed to Amazing Record Co., an indie record label based in the UK. The band have a separate deal with Beat Records for distribution in Japan and with Detroit-based label FiXT Music for North America.
Benjamin Stefanski, better known by his stage name Raffertie, is a British composer and producer, based in London, England. Recording for Ninja Tune between 2010–2013, he now records at Mercury KX and his own label, Super Recordings, which he has run since 2010. Beginning in 2014, Stefanski began to work on film and television scores under the same stage name.
DJ Food is an electronic music project currently headed by Kevin Foakes. It was conceived in 1990 by Jonathan More and Matt Black of Coldcut and the Ninja Tune record label. It has since included various lineups of More, Black, Patrick Carpenter, Foakes, and others, before finally being formed only of Foakes.
Leon Vynehall is a British artist and producer. He released his second album Rare, Forever on 30 April 2021 via Ninja Tune.
David Ciekanski, better known by his stage name Matt Fax, is a French electronic music DJ and record producer.
James Heather is a British pianist and composer based in London. He releases music on Ninja Tune founders Coldcut’s other record label Ahead Of Our Time. Heather released his debut album, Stories From Far Away On Piano, on 18 August 2017. Heather followed up with the album Reworks in December 2018. Heather released his second studio album, Invisible Forces, in 2022. As of June 2019, Heather curates and hosts the monthly Moving Sounds radio show on Soho Radio.