Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness

Launched in 1993 by London nightclub owner Tim Fielding and released via his label of the same name, Journeys by DJ were a series of dance-oriented DJ mix albums, inspired by the plethora of bootleg mix tapes on the black market but with all source material listed and officially licensed. It gave major DJs an opportunity to craft personalised set lists away from the pressure of one-take live club mixes, allowing them time to tweak their mixes. By this point, Coldcut were considered veterans, having four albums, numerous singles and multiple remixes. Coldcut's mix was rooted in Solid Steel, the London-based Kiss FM radio show that the duo had hosted since the late 1980s, which prioritised an improvised and diverse array of records and quick mixing; according to More, Coldcut sometimes persuaded Kiss's station manager to allow them into broadcasting DJ sets over two hours without advertisements, experiences which influenced the structure of the Journeys by DJ mix. Two pivotal influences on Coldcut's approach were Grandmaster Flash's "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" (1981) and Double Dee and Steinski's "Lessons 1–3" (1985), described by Foakes as "taking the best bits from everywhere and making them into something else. It didn't matter if there was some pop in there, like Junior or Culture Club, which generally I hated, but the fact that it was mixed in with all that other stuff... Bugs Bunny and Clint Eastwood." Black said that "Adventures" redefined his personal defections of "what a song could be like", while describing "The Lessons" as "very important, because they were actual lessons. This is how you can go about taking a bunch of old stuff and making it into something new." ==Recording==

Coldcut approached their Journeys by DJ mix through what More described as a set of "random consequences", commenting that each contributor created his own section of sequenced tracks for the mix, including some that were "little routines that been honed at the club nights we used to run." Foakes said he added several ideas that he had practiced in the Solid Steel mixes and in clubs to the mix, such as "where the record gets turned down from 45rpm to 33rpm – that was one of my little club tricks to change the tempo." Black said that a competitive streak drove his contributions to the mix, believing that as audiences were satisfied "with so little", it was an opportunity to show them what could be achieved with a DJ mix and to exhibit "what DJ culture is actually about". Moreover, Black and Foakes commented that the mix was partly a reaction to the prevalence of house DJ mixes, with the former believing that house did not deserve to be "the only musical dish on the menu" and that the mix was an ideal opportunity to prove it. According to The Quietus journalist Joe Clay, DJ mix albums prior to 70 Minutes of Madness tended to be straightforward and linear, with records of the same genre and tempo mixed seamlessly, whereas Coldcut's approach on Journeys by DJ presented a break from the norm. Coldcut and their collaborators pooled a list of records for inclusion, some of which they could not license. More and Black said they would mix first and only then seek permission, which affected the course of the production; the former commented that Sony refused to license Coldcut their own song "People Hold On", which Patrick had mixed with the Moody Boys' "Free". Similarly, Black said that Leftfield's "Original (Jam)" could not be licensed so the act placed Air Liquide on the mix instead. The mix was created in parts, resulting in what Black called it a "kind of a comment on the interface between DJing, mixing and studio production"; Foakes commented that the multilayering was achieved using ADAT, with computers only used for editing at the end of the process, while More says the act created alternate parts over two 40-minute ADATs which then had to be joined: "Kiss FM had got some computer editing software for radio and we copied the two sections from the ADAT and loaded them into the computer and joined it together. We did it up in the studios of Kiss." The album was mastered by David Turner. ==Composition==

Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness is structured similarly to Coldcut's cult Kiss FM shows and exhibits their 'freestyle' approach to mixing. funk, techno, A reviewer for Music Week said the album draws together "all manner of dub, hip hop and breakbeat styles. Mashed up dirty beats, bleepy noises, bits of soundtrack – it's all thrown in for an armchair rather than dancefloor experience." Music writer Sean Cooper highlights the disparate artists, ranging "from Harold Budd to Dillinja, Joanna Law to the Jedi Knights", and the mix's rapid jumps between musical styles to draw connections "between hip-hop, jungle, techno, electro, ambient, and beyond". Music author Ed Gillett says it swerves deliriously "between jungle, acid techno, breakbeats and ambient interludes, layered with vocal samples salvaged from the dustbins of twentieth-century cultural ephemera," Spoken by actor Geoffrey Sumner and lifted from a 1958 stereo sound demonstration LP, the sample continues that the journey "will bring to you new colour, new dimension, new values, and a new experience", before, as Gillett describes, "his voice echoes away into nothingness, and the beat drops." The first track is Philorene's "Bola", mixed in with Depth Charge's "Depth Charge", a piece of dub hip hop whose prominent beats and unusual effects set the tone for the album. Junior Reid's "One Blood" is played over Roni Size-style beats and is in turn segued into a dub mix of Newcleus' "Jam on It", which then switches to a hard glitch remix of 2 Player's "Extreme Possibilities". Among later contrasts, Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme music (1963) plays besides the 1990s dub of the Moody Boys, while Biafra's piece, a protest against fascism in the United States, is sequenced between Hookian Mindz' ambient track "Freshmess" and the "beat freneticism" of Pressure Drop's "Unify". Some inclusions pay homage to Coldcut's 1980s hip hop roots, such as selections from Boogie Down Productions and Mantronix. ==Release==

Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness was released on 16 October 1995 through Journeys by DJ and its distributor Music Unites. It was the eighth edition in the Journeys by DJ series, The subtitle, 70 Minutes of Madness, is a reference to Coldcut's 1987 genre-fusing remix of Eric B. & Rakim's "Paid in Full", which was subtitled "Seven Minutes of Madness". The album was deleted in 1998 after the track licenses expired, by which point the album had become a "modern classic". Demand for a re-release followed but it took four years to renegotiate the track licenses. Journeys by DJ was re-released by the label of the same name on 28 May 2002, following an event celebrating the reissue at London nightclub The End on 18 May. Laurence Windo, writing in Music Week, wrote that "all the buyers are after it and as a result the sell-in has been phenomenal and it should chart well." It also peaked at number two on the American CMJ RPM airplay chart for electronic music and ranked 28th in its year-end chart. ==Critical reception==

On release, Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness received widespread acclaim from music critics, which Foakes attributes to there being "nothing else like it out there. It was existing at number one in a field of one." For Muzik, Calvin Bush wrote that the album proved that "you don't have to be a high bpm DJ to rock da crowd", highlighting the "breathtaking" variety of sounds as "one in the eye" for DJs who barely change tempos within a set, and writing that a "new wave of sound" emerges as the tracks begin blurring into "one delirious mindfuck of funk". He concluded that it was possibly "the best mix CD ever" and motivation to move to London to hear Coldcut's Solid Steel show. The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that the mix proceeds in a similar manner to the Future Sound of London's set ISDN (1995), albeit "far more focussed, the contrast of stunningly original melodies and rhythms with elegantly electric cut-up samples evolving into a riveting kind of dancefloor dialectic." He praised the album for exceeding expectations as a "kaleidoscopic summation" of Coldcut's career to date. Shane Danielson of The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that it organises 35 disparate tracks into a "single, cohesive listening experience, with all the peaks and troughs, the rapid liner imperative, of a normal album." He expressed surprised that it works, calling the effect "dizzying, a sound collage of immense diversity and power", and concluded: "With a sterling list of contributors, and some hard-to-find, well chosen material, this is exhilarating – like 70 minutes in the best club." The North Wales Weekly News critic Darren Parry considered it far superior to other recent Journeys by DJ editions, eschewing their handbag and hard house flavours for an eclectic 'freestyle' mix that proves that "music needn't be bound by category." Less favourably, The Village Voice reviewer Robert Christgau described DJ Food's "The Dusk" as a "choice cut", indicating "a good song on an album that isn't worth your time or money". In their year-end lists of the best albums of 1995, Journeys by DJ was ranked eighth by Mixmag, and 35th by Melody Maker. Reviewing the 2002 issue, CMJ New Music Monthly reviewer Justin Kleinfeld wrote that it blended hip-hop, funk, techno and drum and bass into "one rule-breaking (or rule-defining, depending on how you look at it) mix" that "helped revolutionize the DJ's role as music sculptor". He wrote that it "still manages to remain fresh" and praised the placement of Joanna Law's "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" between tracks by Raphael Corderdos and Photek as the mix's greatest and most unexpectable moment. Peter Shapiro of Rough Guides calls it Coldcut's best album and "easily the best commercially available mix compilation", recommending it to those who have "never experienced a DJ epiphany". ==Legacy==

Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness is widely considered to be one of the greatest DJ mix albums ever. Some publications, such as CMJ New Music Monthly and Resident Advisor, comment that many deem it to be the greatest DJ mix album ever released. Clay writes that this accolade is widely shared among music fans, adding that the mix "redefined what a DJ mix should be, perfectly capturing the cut & paste ethic of the mid-90s in the process, while arguably inventing what became the pop mash-up." while his colleague Tony Naylor called it a "legendary", game-changing DJ mix and "a Damascene moment, a shocking illustration of just how boring mainstream, mid-90s dance music had become." Others, such as Andrew Club of The Age and Chris Mugan of The Independent comment that 70 Minutes of Madness was a milestone in the history of mix albums. American musician Keith Fullerton Whitman said that Journeys by DJ was his favourite "dance music mix-tape" through the late 1990s and early 2000s. Discussing the mix's impact in 2010, David Taylor of The Independent said that it is "still (rightfully) held in high esteem by anyone who has ever attempted to mix." According to Cooper, the album was credited with helping increase attention to the style of freestyle mixing that Coldcut exhibited on Solid Steel and club performances, a style which "later took off through clubs like Blech and the Heavenly Sunday Social." In a review of Coldcut's subsequent album Sound Mirrors (2006), Jess Harvell of Pitchfork referred to Journeys by DJ as "the most overrated DJ mix of all time". Despite enjoying the album, Stylus Magazines Scott Plagenhoef criticised several of the spoken samples for their "trip-hop/marijuana trappings", and overall preferred 2ManyDJs' more upbeat As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 (2002), and the work of DJ /rupture. More commented on the lack of a Coldcut follow-up to Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness in 2015, saying that although the option remained open, the original "was an outpouring of creativity and energy that would be hard to replicate", while Black commented: "On one level it's like, we did it. We made the statement. We don't need to do it again." However, Black believes that Coldcut Presents 2 Hours of Sanity Part 1: Love (2013) "picks up where Journeys by DJ left off", citing his intention to make a complex, layered mix of experimental music that "raised the bar again". Publications who included it in their list of the best DJ mix albums include Q (in 1997), Spin (in 2001), DJ Magazine (in 2014), and The Quietus (in 2015). In 1996, Spin also included it in their 20-album history of electronica; contributor Neil Strauss wrote that DJ mixes spotlight "one of electronic's (and this century's) important art forms: the collage", with Coldcut's record notable for profiling their own history of electronica, incorporating science-fiction snippets, electro-funk, techno and jungle. In 1998, it topped Jockey Sluts list of the greatest compilations of all time. The Guardian included the album in their 2007 list of "1,000 albums to hear before you die", one of four DJ mix albums to feature. The album has been listed among the best or most classic releases from the Ninja Tune stable by The Independent, New Zealand Herald and Generation Ecstasy author Simon Reynolds. Trip hop historian R.J. Wheaton names it one of ten essential albums in the fields of cut-ups and hip hop collage. ==Track listing==

Adapted from the liner notes of Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness • Coldcut – DJ mix • PC – performer ("aided & abetted") • Strictly – performer ("aided & abetted") • Jo Beckett – coordinator • Tim Fielding – coordinator • David Turner @ Tape to Tape – mastering • Openmind – design, artwork remix • Suzi Green – original photography ==Charts==