Description
£24.99 – 2xLP
Goldie’s debut Timeless (1995) changed the face of music culture. Bringing the nascent drum & bass scene to the masses, the album careered into the Top 10, hit a number of album-of-the-year polls and earned enthusiastic praise from David Bowie. Goldie became a star in the process.
But while everyone was eagerly anticipating a repeat of the Timeless formula, Goldie had other ideas. Instead, he pushed his creativity to the max and released Saturnz Return (1998). “The record company thought I was gonna make Timeless 2 but I actually went the other way. I can’t as an artist make what I don’t believe in – I just can’t”, Goldie says. Brave, innovative, experimental and bursting with emotion, the album proved to be one of the most bold and divisive sets in history. Yet twenty years on, his vision is thoroughly vindicated. His innovative blend of beats and orchestration has been emulated by everyone from Carl Craig to Pete Tong.
The raw blitzkrieg rush of ‘Temper Temper’ sets Noel Gallagher’s Hendrix-tinged guitar to aggy junglist rhythms with Goldie expunging angry demons with his vocals. And then Goldie’s hip-hop hero KRS-One adds his commanding lyrical mastery to the punchy ‘Digital’. The experimentation continues with ‘Letter Of Fate’. Goldie found a suicide note he’d once written before tucking it away inside a book that Afrika Bambaataa had given him a decade before. Using it as the basis for this ballad, the mournful voice is overlain with a half-whispered mantra that’s actually Goldie’s voice backwards. And finally ‘Demonz’ ended the album in the same uncompromising style it began – this time in the shape of clanking breakbeat chaos.
All of the original tracks on the album have been remastered specifically for this 21st Anniversary Edition. The release of Saturnz Return (21st Anniversary Edition) caps the latest project in a reflective but still creative era in Goldie’s career. In 2017, he returned to the Top 10 with his long-awaited third album and magnum opus The Journey Man. He followed that with 2018’s 25 Years of Goldie, which compiled remastered versions of some of his favourite unreleased or rare tracks. Such projects are a timely reminder that Goldie is one of British music’s most influential talents – and one of its biggest personalities too.
Tracklisting:
A1. I’ll Be There For You
A2. Chico – Death Of A Rockstar
B1. Fury – The Origin
B2. Crystal Clear
C1. Demonz
C2. Digital
C3. Temper Temper (Optical Mix)
D1. Letter Of Fate
D2. Truth
D3. Dragonfly