Subjective

★★★★ Act One – Music For Inanimate Objects SONY MUSIC MASTERWORKS. CD/DL/LP

Drum’n’bass spearhead’s new project dials down the tempo.

GOLDIE IS one of life’s ‘doers’, his CV sparkling like his molars. Graffiti artist; drum’n’bass pioneer; soap star; symphonic composer; MBE. All achieved with a degree of singlemindedness. Yet he’s always leant on collaborators. Like his longterm Metalheadz cohort Rob Playford, Goldie’s partner in Subjective, James Davidson, is an engineer and drum’n’bass producer. Together, they’ve made an album rich in melancholia, softened with orchestral arrangements and enriched by female voices, at turns wistful, at others paranoid. Released on Sony’s classical label, there’s not an Amen break in earshot. Instead, tempos are pitched down, allowing space into which female vocals seep, most notably on Find Your Light, where grand Rhodes piano chords meld with volleys of strings for some decidedly British-sounding urban soul. On Re-Entry, Subjective voyage further out, towards cavernous, Sasha-style breakbeat house. Proving that dance music’s renaissance man is still wedded to both beat and street.