Ninja Tune
Coldcut
Press Release for "Mr Nichols"
Promo only 12"
“Please Mr Nichols, come back inside the window…”
January 2006 sees the release of “Sound Mirrors,” a new album from Coldcut.
But first we bring you a very limited promo-only 12” of one track: “Mr Nichols”
When Jon More and Matt Black played the melancholic bones of the tune to rapper/poet/rock star/actor Saul Williams they could hardly have hoped that they could tease a better lyric from him. Unfolding over three minutes we hear the story of Mr
Nichols, a salaryman left on the edge, fallen apart and utterly empty.
Coldcut have weaved a slowly building piece of music of such power that Williams can focus on simple story-telling rather than preaching from the mountain. Equally interpretable as an attack on American
foreign policy as a personal psychodrama, it is the quiet intensity of the music that carries it. Subtle and moving perhaps aren’t the words we most commonly associate with Coldcut, but, then again, as pioneers and innovators they have built
their whole career on doing the unexpected, whether it be making hits for Lisa Stansfield or walking away from the majors to start Ninja Tune. As we hope “Mr Nichols” makes clear, the only thing you can be sure of with “Sound
Mirrors” is that you, along with everyone else, will have to hear it…