Drum-n-bass legend Goldie gets fresh with Fresh!
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer
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| Goldie, a breakbeat superstar DJ whose giant hit is the two-disc "Timeless," heads for Indigo's Get Fresh! tonight.
Contagious Musiq Goldie with MC Armanni Get Fresh! 10 p.m. today Indigo Eurasian Cuisine $10 21 and older 591-3500 |
Sure, he once sold those same gold teeth caps on the streets of New York, Miami and London. But the moniker comes straight outta the former Clifford Price's early 20s, when he first gained notice on London's mid-'80s hip-hop and breakdancing scene for his graffiti art and gold dreadlocks.
How Goldie made his name in club lore is an altogether different story.
The British-based turntablist is a near-legendary pioneer of drum-n-bass — a hard-core techno genre also known as jungle, and marked by blisteringly fast drum beats and bottomless bass. Goldie is one of breakbeat's first true superstar DJs, and his supremely ambitious two-disc 1995 debut "Timeless" remains one of the genre's most critically lauded and best-selling musical works.
Indigo Eurasian Cuisine's consistently inventive Get Fresh! event hands over the tables to Goldie and his omnipresent "record box" tonight. Goldie's Contagious Musiq labelmate MC Armanni also stops in to drop some flow.
Hype followed Goldie from his graffiti-art roots through his introduction to England-birthed breakbeat culture in the early 1990s. Goldie's hip-hop proclivities fell by the wayside when he began learning engineering and production from Dego and Mark Mac, founders of pioneer drum-n-bass label Reinforced Records, in 1992.
The 1993 jungle classic "Terminator" — recorded under the pseudonym Metalheadz — assured Goldie a welcome introduction to the scene. The single was one of the first to use jungle's now signature "time-stretching" technique — stretching a vocal sample over varied beats without altering pitch.
Arriving two years later, however, "Timeless" — with its manic, propulsive beats, amorous bassline and speed-freak drive — was a grand sonic attack that raised the bar on anything or anyone that dared follow it up. Goldie included.
Though equally epic in scale, Goldie's less-focused 1998 two-disc soph set "SaturnzReturn" proved slightly less provocative critically and commercially, as would subsequent releases. "Timeless," meanwhile, has sold more than 250,000 copies since its 1995 release — an impressive feat for a drum-n-bass disc.
Goldie remains a solo club draw worldwide, and has performed with musicians such as Rage Against The Machine, Beth Orton and (former paramour) Bjork.
Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8005.
