What’s That Noise? by Coldcut

What's That Noise?, Coldcut's debut album, came out on Reprise in 1989, and it plays like a crate-digger's scrapbook glued together on a sampler. Matt Black and Jonathan More produced it themselves, and the English duo already credited with pioneering pop sampling, and with kicking off the British fad for DJ records, stretch their cut-and-paste method across a whole LP without it ever going slack.

Then there's the guest list, which reads like a pirate radio schedule. Lisa Stansfield sings on "People Hold On" and "My Telephone", Yazz turns up for "Doctorin' the House", Queen Latifah drops into "Smoke 1", Junior Reid fronts "Stop This Crazy Thing", and, most gloriously out of place, the Fall's Mark E. Smith brings his sour bark to "(I'm) In Deep". Hip-hop breaks, soul, funk and snatches of chatter collide and somehow keep the floor moving. It climbed to number 20 on the UK albums chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.