Their only way was up

Coldcut's Jonathan More (L) and Matt Black - careful with their cash and creative with their music.

The beginning

Jonathan More and Matt Black met 19 years ago in a record shop called Reckless Records in Berwick St, London.

"It was an interesting time," says More. "The dance-music scene was new, fresh and exciting. I was working at Reckless, DJing at a club night that I ran called the Meltdown Party, had a show on Kiss FM, which was a pirate radio station in those days, and DJing alongside Norman Jay and Judge Jules at the big underground party, Shakin' Finger Pop Family Function. We'd hook the generator up to a lamp-post near some derelict building and have a party."

More sold Black a few records one day and they got talking. "He'd made some tracks - he brought them in the next day. I was into that, and it was pretty much the basis of Say Kids, What Time Is It?"

That song, from 1987, was Coldcut's first single and the first fully sample-based track released in Britain, preceding MARRS' Pump Up the Volume by two years.

The pop stars

"The first people we worked with, although we never met them, were Eric B. & Rakim. We were lucky, I guess," deadpans More.

No kidding. Coldcut's epic seven-minute remix of the track Paid In Full made everyone prick up their ears and take notice.

But if it wasn't for the 1988 song The Only Way Is Up they probably wouldn't be here today. That number one pop hit, with vocals from Yazz and Coldcut working under the alias of the Plastic Population, was a world-wide smash. Earlier that year they also released the single People Hold On featuring Lisa Stansfield.

However, says More, that brush with popstar fame "was a combination of fun and horror, really.

"On the record-industry side of things it was quite horrific and it taught us to remove ourselves from that and form [their own label] Ninja Tune."

The pioneers

It was during a tour of Japan in 1991 that the pair came up with the idea for Ninja Tune, a label specialising in left-field electronica. It was an innovative step and is home to groundbreaking acts like mongrel hip-hop act the Herbaliser, experimental drum'n'bass whizz Amon Tobin and bass bandit Roots Manuva.

"We got a good brand going, but we were influenced by people like Stax Records and Def Jam. So we just wanted a place we could release music that was interesting to us, and where people who had the same ideas as us had a safe place to make music and not be beaten round the head by the industry."

More refuses to be called a pioneer: "We were a part of the whole dance-music explosion, which was culturally defining, and we were there from the beginning. But it wasn't just us, there was a whole bunch of other people. We just build upon what's gone before us and we develop things that keep us interested and excited about making music."

The albums

Here are 10 Ninja Tune classics:

9 Lazy 9 - Electric Lazyland (1994)

Coldcut - Journeys By DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness (1996)

Wagonchrist - Tally Ho (1998)

Amon Tobin - Supermodified (2000)

Roots Manuva - Run Come Save Me (2001)

Cinematic Orchestra - Every Day (2002)

Hexstatic - Listen & Learn (2003)

Herbaliser - Herbal Blend (2003)

Mr Scruff - Keep It Solid Steel (2004)

Coldcut - Sound Mirrors (2006)

The businessmen

"You have to be both a businessman and a musician otherwise you won't survive. In saying that we've got furniture in our office that we got out of a skip 15 years ago, whereas other companies might spend hundreds of pounds on trendy stuff for their office. And we haven't done that. We're careful with our cash and creative with our music."

The inventors

Coldcut's new album Sound Mirrors comes with a VJamm software demo which allows you to mix audio/visual (AV) files. So you too can be a VJ (video jockey) just like More and Black.

There's a drummer and Flavor Flav from Public Enemy doing some vocals so you can mash it up to your heart's content.

VJamm, which Coldcut use in their live shows, was developed by the pair in 1997 because "there weren't any tools available to do what we wanted to do".

The video for Timber, from the 1997 album Let Us Play!, was one of the first and most famous examples of the technology in action.

"We wanted to manipulate video and audio data together in one chunk in the same way that we could with the music we were playing. We wanted to be able to scratch video clips. In its crudest sense it's like a piano player for playing video clips and on stage it all just gets thrown up in the air and messed around with."

The future

"Quite possibly Coldcut is now bigger than both of us, but we don't even think about it. We just crank on and keep doing shit that's interesting. The Rolling Stones are still doing it aren't they?"

* Coldcut - Audio visual dancefloor masters - at St James, Thursday, Sept 28

* Album Sound Mirrors out now

* Workshop: Tomorrow Coldcut hold a workshop at the Red Bull Studio in Hargreaves St at 5pm (invitation only).

* Movie: The screening of British music video showcase Antenna UK at 8.30pm today at Rialto will be followed by a Q&A session with Coldcut.