Hexstatic

by John Bush Though they're best known in the music world as the award-winning visual arm of audio cut-and-paste experts Coldcut, Hexstatic (previously Hex) has broken down the barriers between music, multimedia, and computers ever since they created the first computer-generated pop video (Coldcut's Christmas Break) in 1990. Graphic design artists Robert Pepperell and Miles Visman formed Hex along with Coldcut's Matt Black and Jonathan More. While working on videos for artists including Kevin Saunderson, Queen Latifah, and Spiritualized, Hex programmed a video game (High Banana) in 1991 and inaugurated a series of multimedia CD-ROMs just one year later with Global Chaos CDTV, which united music, graphics, and video games into one product. A series of successors (Escape, Global Chaos, and Digital Love) preceded the release of 1994's AntiStatic, another CD-ROM simultaneously released on CD and vinyl by Coldcut's NTone Records. (High Banana) in 1991 and inaugurated a series of multimedia CD-ROMs just one year later with Global Chaos CDTV, which united music, graphics, and video games into one product. A series of successors (Escape, Global Chaos, and Digital Love) preceded the release of 1994's AntiStatic, another CD-ROM simultaneously released on CD and vinyl by Coldcut's NTone Records. Throughout the '90s, Hex accompanied Black and More's live performances with visuals, and Pepperell also developed the CD-ROM portion of Coldcut's 1997 LP, Let Us Play, plus the software used during the world tour. Though Pepperell and Visman later left Hex, fresh blood came in the form of Stuart Warren Hill and Robin Brunson. Their first work for Coldcut, the Timber video, won awards for its innovative use of repetitive video clips synced to the music. In 2000, they released Rewind, their own album for NTone. Obviously a digital-edge release, the two-disc set combined CD-ROM and DVD capabilities to a fully synchronized music video release. In 2003, Hexstatic contributed a second volume to Coldcut's turntablist mix series Solid Steel, Listen & Learn. Master-View from 2004 was another multimedia package, this time featuring one CD and one DVD. Their 2007 effort When Robots Go Bad featured guest vocalists Ema J, Sabirajade, and MC Profisee.