100 Greatest Songs of the 90’s #23 Goldie – Angel

Released : 1995

Extract from the Weekender piece on Timeless, originally published in 2018:

Like all good urban legends, the tale of how Clifford Joseph Price, formerly of Walsall and then London via Miami became known simply as Goldie has more than one exposition. Writing in his own biography on Resident Adviser the DJ/Producer and father of breakbeats with our breakfasts tells us the nickname first stuck to him as a rasta then labelled Goldielocks; plenty of others say it became his shorthand in or after a spell hustling in South Florida following his conspicuous dental work.

By 1995 Goldie had been absorbing every sonic facet across the entire spectrum of Jungle’s domain, from the uncompromising street sounds and MC braggadocio of the ever-darker club nights to the increasingly jazz influenced sophistication of output on labels like Moving Shadow and Good Looking. Timeless was the result, a record which fused cutting edge production and studio trickery with the adrenalin of the unknown, simultaneously raw and smooth, an hour plus of whatever you wanted it to be.

On both Angel and Sensual vocalists D.Charlemagne and Justina Curtis were bewitching, emphasising the fluidity of the ruckus beneath them as the staccato noise pounded and ebbed, a vastly dynamic motion often pushing at the margins but never you sensed even close to being out of control. Timeless was a monstrous hybrid of a new beginning, one which also represented an alternative vision to the superclub banality of the legalised party scene, and remains the bar for drum n’ bass which every subsequent imitator fell at, a record that led the rest of its field by light years on release – and never looked back.