A titular tip of the turntable to George Clinton marks the return of Coldcut's Matt Black and Jonathan More to dance-floor preeminence. While the veteran producers' Ninja Tunes imprint virtually defined the state of cutting-edge '90s trip-hop, Black and More hid behind the relative anonymity of their DJ Food and Hedfunk identities. High-profile '80s production stints with Erik B & Rakim and Lisa Stansfied remain Coldcut's claims to fame. Meanwhile, the savvy duo's prescient wheels-of-steel and sampling maneuvers serve as the templates employed by urban and suburban "headz" alike.
These tracks are politically fueled funk-feasts filled with provocative samples, crafty beats, indomitable basslines, and gobs of wiggy Moog, but the remixes contributed by such certified heads as The Herbaliser, Luke Vibert, and Red Snapper are even stronger. The Herbaliser slows "Atomic Moog" to a menacing hip-hop crawl over which Oliver Parfitt goes Moog-wild. Vibert's smoldering mix has an itchy, circling urgency; Red Snapper takes its treatment in a smoky, ragga-jazz direction; and Bedouin Ascent's standout "Crash the System" follows fusion-y fretless lines into increasingly distorted electro-soul forms. Coldcut's "Natural Rhythm" video, a technically flawless feat of audio/video syncopation that is included in the disc's CDPlus sector, is even more astonishing.