OVER the past couple of years Goldie has attained the status of the most prominent peak of the British Jungle landscape. His crown as that country's best known Drum and Bass technician has not come accidentally.potential, eschewing the jarring, cut up style in favour of an altogether smoother, more soulful music.
The first Irish date on the current tour nevertheless opened with the Metalheadz DJ taking the crowd through a whistle stop tour of the sub genres into which the jungle form has already fragmented. Fast and persistent tech no edged tunes cosy up to more avant garde, disjointed breakbeats as half double and triple speed percussive bursts pile up on the sonic bonfire.
Jungle, drum and bass aft, core take your pick this is not just one new style, it's half a dozen of them.
Goldie's strain of jungle dumps dense drum loops and a live bass guitar in a matrix of moody synth, and sometimes fairly cheesy soulful vocals.
The album Timeless proceeds in this manner for more than an hour, and the live set did very much the same thing.
The differences between the two were mostly a matter of subtlety rather than conception, as Goldie was happy enough to quickstep through the album material. While there is nothing like a stadium PA for boosting the bass until every body cavity vibrates to the rhythm, some of Goldie's subtler dub effects were swamped in the large hall.
If Goldie is to take the title he so clearly wants, as the first superstar of Jungle, he will have to solve the problem of what to offer a concert audience far more imaginatively than he has this first time around.
