Tuesday, February 03, 2009

806. Goldie - Timeless (1995)





















Track Listing

1. Timeless
2. Saint Angel
3. State Of Mind
4. This Is A Bad
5. Sea Of Tears
6. Jah The Seventh Seal
7. A Sense Of Rage (Sensual Vip Mix)
8. Still Life
9. Angel
10. Adrift
11. Kemistry
12. You And Me
13. Inner City Life (Baby Boy's Edit)
14. Inner City Life (Rabbit's Short Attention Span Edit)

Review

Over the decades Jamaican music has brought us many joys. I would not, however, include Jungle Drum & Bass in this category. However, like in almost any genre, there are always a couple of albums which have great merit. This is one of them.

Unless you are a proper junglist you will probably never need to listen to many Jungle albums other than Timeless by Goldie, he uses the breakbeats and sounds that made Jungle what it is in a very intelligent way, breaking the music away from its utilitarian ends as dance music into something which can be appreciated by itself.

The problem is that it is very dated. The whole genre is, even the whole genre of dance music is dated and does not look like it is going to make a great return outside holiday resorts. By dance music I mean specifically music composed with an utilitarian aim of filling up clubs instead of just "electronic music". The E culture is disappearing (sadly I might add) and it's all about hipsters listening to yet another samey-indie-band track on their night out. Timeless manages to be both utilitarian and quite interesting, however, and if you are interested you should definitely check it out.

Track Highlights

1. Timeless
2. Still Life
3. State Of Mind
4. This is a Bad

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The album blended the complex, chopped and layered breakbeats and deep basslines of jungle and drum and bass with expansive, symphonic strings and atmospherics, and beautiful female vocals, creating a crossover hit. Released on Pete Tong's FFRR label, the album reached #7 in the charts, and few consider it bettered by his subsequent releases.

Timeless was simultaneously released as a double album and single album. The single album removed four tracks and featured the original mix of "Sensual". The U.S. release of the double album appended two bonus remixes.

Then an active graffiti artist, Goldie featured his paintings in the album's artwork.

A bit of Timeless, the whole thing is over 20 minutes:


1 comment:

Rod McBan said...

I think one big problem with this list is that it is clearly including a lot of electronic albums due to their being big sellers, rather than genuinely great works.

As to club music, there's still loads of great stuff being produced and danced to, in the techno and house realms at least. It's sort of like how there's still loads of disco about even though it peaked as a mainstream commodity back in the 70s. As to jungle, I suppose dubstep resurrected it pretty well.