Jon More and Matt Black – aka Coldcut – the grandmasters of UK cut ‘n’ paste and founders of the Ninja Tune rebel alliance return with the brand new “Only Heaven” EP featuring collaborations with Roots Manuva, Roses Gabor and Dave Taylor (Switch / With You.) best known for his work with M.I.A., Diplo (as Major Lazer) and Beyoncé.

The results are, as you’d expect, sensational. “Only Heaven” offers a falling, music-box sadness, soulful and dislocated all at once. Over it, Roots Manuva lays out a trademark stream of consciousness performance, both impassioned and alienated. The beauty here is just how good they make it sound, a kind of anthem for doomed youth as alluring as it is sad. “Creative” gives us something for the dancefloor, a vicious, swinging rhythm, building to an ecstatic finish. “Dreamboats” sees the return of Manuva, this time joined by Gabor for the chorus, all over a crackling, juddering monster of a beat. “Donald’s Wig” is Roses Gabor’s moment to shine and she grabs it – deconstructed d&b, the tune comes over like post-punk spy music with bigger beats. Gabor herself has never sounded better.

This being Coldcut, audio is always combined with visual – and with politics. Cover art is by Kim Rugg a fine artist whose painstaking analog cutup techniques to ‘tidy’ newspapers meshes perfectly with Coldcut’s own. The cover art also forms the basis of an interactive meme player by Whitestone, a startup that aims to reclaim the sadly missed album cover as an interactive canvas. The player features Coldcut music and collaborative memes by Richard Scarfolk, the Daily Mash and Richard Dent which can be shared to encourage engagement on positive political causes like Stop Funding Hate.

Pre-Order: https://coldcut.bandcamp.com/album/only-heaven

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