70 Minutes of Madness - Journeys by DJ

From a typical moody DJ point of view, the mixing is out of this world. The vision to create a journey like this, the ability to dig through a record collection and find such an array of tracks to lay over each other like that is the way they were always meant to be heard in the first place. I remember playing this to a mate in a car which chonking around Hemel countryside and he said he'd never heard anything that was this good, ever.

This compilation used to fetch up to £100 on Ebay before it finally got re-issued due to overwhelming demand. Snap it up and find out why.

Oh and if you like this, check out Cold Krush Cuts/Back In The Base. A wee little Ninja Tune compilation with Coldcut at the controls mixing up a similar amount of madness plus the bonus of DJ Krush taking control of a disc for his blend of smoked out beats!

When you think that Coldcut were upto these tricks over 10 years ago, it is simply a phenomenal achievement, and the pinnacle of this was their 70 Minutes of Madness. Within these 36 tracks are every genre of music available. Long before the hype surrounding "eclectic" or "bar-club" DJs, Coldcut were doing it. But its so much more than this: yes there is everything on this mix, but you cannot notice. It is seamless and inticately woven with all manner of samples. So many individual moments stand out from this mix: the overlaying of Junior Reid's dub with storming Drum n Bass; the Jhelisa accapella over DJ Food; the simply sublime construction using "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and Luke Slater's sweeping pads. So many moments of hilarity also, most notably: "Can your heart stand the shocking truth of grave robbers from outer space?".

But within these moments of brilliance is an overall structure that is fresh and inventive and brilliantly executed. Opening with Drum n Bass, moving through to Avant-garde techno, to Jackin' Hip-Hop beats, and finishing with laid-back, deep Trip-Hop, this is programming at its finest. We are assaulted with varying emotional states and intensity. We voyage from intensity to humour to grooves to funk to beauty to dark claustrophobia to political musings to relaxed and dream-like states, all with an overt lucidity. But these changes are not harsh or abrasive; they simply provide the structure of the piece...

I say "piece" because that is what it becomes. You begin to realise that this isn't just a collection of Coldcut's favourite plates, but is a whole, a unified piece of music. Thus, it works on the higher level as a 70 minute symphony. At points, it is easy to get lost amongst the huge tracklisting, and this only fuels the intrigue of the piece. It is simply fluid, and yet a swirling, ever-changing fluidity that has never been matched by any DJ anywhere, anyhow, anytime. To be blunt: it is the greatest production of any DJ, and unfortunately it may never be equalled.

To start off with the breaks of Bola - Philorene & Street Beats- Vol. 2, to work though a couple of Coldcut classics like Beats & Pieces to scratch around, throw in some samples scratch around some more then drop into First Time I Ever Saw Your Face - Joanna Law and then back out again is just staggering.

I've been dj'ing for some years an I can't work out how's it done.

Whether you're new to dance / house music or have been around for years but haven't yet heard this album - buy it. It's a classic, it's a must for every collection. You really wouldn't want to miss out.