Coldcut (the DJs Matt Black and Jonathan More) were crucial protagonists of the British "house" scene of the 1990s, and, above all, invented a way of making dance music by glueing together samples.

In 1987, Coldcut wrote Say Kids What Time Is It, perhaps the first British hit composed by assembling samples, as well as hits for singer Yazz, but they became famous and influential with their collage albums, which span the entire spectrum of danceable styles, and with their label, Ninja Tune, the epicenter of 1990s danceable electronic music. Their deconstruction of an Eric B & Rakim track, Paid In Full, represents the manifesto of a new (authorial) way of conceiving the remix.

After the singles Beats And Pieces (1987) and Doctorin' The House, and the album Out To Lunch (Big Life, 1989), consolidated the new genre, What's That Noise (Big Life, 1989) established the duo also as composers, thanks to the disco groove of People Hold On and especially to dadaist pastiches like My Telephone and Stop That Crazy Thing. Their unbridled imagination, rocambolesque rhythm, and mischievous approach recall Frank Zappa more than Giorgio Moroder. No one else manipulated samples, used analog keyboards, and produced a digital sound like Coldcut.

Some Like It Cold (Big Life, 1990) continued this program, albeit with less flair.

Autumn Leaves, Dreamer, the centerpiece of Philosophy (Arista, 1994), and Feeling Stronger were the singles dominating 1994. Journeys By DJ (Music Unites, 1995) is an intentionally confusing and blurred album.

Here and there, the duo anticipated the trip-hop of Portishead, particularly under the pseudonym Hedfunk (Shadow, 1995), offering a polished mix of drum'n'bass and hip-hop with funk and jazz samples and an “ambient” atmosphere. In parallel, the Hex project continued through the albums Anti Static (Ninja Tune, 1992), Glocal Chaos (Ninja Tune, 1993), and Digital Love (Ninja Tune, 1994).

Journeys By DJ (1996 – Journeys By DJ, 2002) is a legendary 70-minute mix album.

Coldcut also launched another project, called DJ Food.

Another disorienting collage of samples, Let Us Play (Ninja Tune, 1997), opened the doors to the digital era. The sound is as spectacular, dizzying, and chameleon-like as it is cold and empty. Kitsch orchestration, frequent changes of theme (soft jazz-rock, free-jazz trumpets, light-music orchestrion with xylophone), comical keyboard disturbances, and the elegant flow of the long instrumental Return To Margin make it seem like a Frank Zappa suite updated for DJs’ electromechanical instruments.
This is also the style of the single Atomic Moog 2000, still immersed in kitsch sounds, barely masked by frantic jungle beats. Far more violent and unpredictable is the assembly of the other single, More Beats And Pieces, with symphonic snippets, cartoonish choruses, hip-hop syncopation, and funky phrases. Another single, Timber, sinks without a trace.
The duo’s intellectual (or worse, political) ambitions are almost never backed by musical genius: Rubaiyat attempts to fuse lounge jazz-rock and ambient music, Space Journey tries to bridge organ soul and African tribalism, and the two final rap tracks are disappointing. The problem is that much of their collage work is gratuitous, and anyone with enough money and time could rent the same studio and make something similar. The Steve Reich-style minimalism of Music 4 No Musicians is perhaps the only exception.

Let Us Replay (Ninja Tune, 1999) is a remix album that only demonstrates that their work is technology, not art.

While their influence on subsequent generations of British DJs is undeniable, their taste in music composition is at best questionable. Most of their tracks are merely demonstrations of what can be done with their invention; essentially, they are acts of self-glorification. If their ambition was also to convey emotion, it is not easily felt on their albums.

Coldcut's career was always a sequence of hits and misses, but the striking factor is that the "hits" were usually remixes of other musicians' work and the "misses" are Coldcut's original compositions.

Coldcut returned with the single Everything is Under Control and the album Sound Mirrors (Ninja Tune, 2005), an eclectic and competent work that ran the gamut from house (Walk A Mile In My Shoes) to ambient dub, although it failed to justify why the world of 2005 still needs Jon Moore and Matt Black to do what many djs and producers can do better.