Goldie’s 30-year career has seen him pioneer the ’90s UK jungle, drum & bass and breakbeat scenes and work with a litany of high-profile musicians including Bowie, Noel Gallagher, 4hero and Pete Tong. Despite numerous sojourns into acting and the art world, 2017 saw the iconic musician return to the musical fold with his album The Journey Man, working alongside ex-Ulterior Motive producer and revered sound engineer James Davidson.
Seeking to realise their potential as a production duo, Goldie then invited Davidson to begin writing and recording at his home studio based in Phuket, Thailand. The result was a new project, Subjective, debuting with the cerebral ambient album Act One – Music for Inanimate Objects (2019). With tracks left over from those initial sessions, Pete Tong encouraged the duo to record a second long player, The Start of No Regret, which moves further towards Goldie’s drum&bass DNA.
– GOLDIE
You’ve been spending a lot of time together in Thailand. Is that solely about promotion?
James Davidson: “This time it was supposed to be solely about promotion and to show people where we wrote it and what we were doing, but as tends to happen when we’re in the studio, we ended up writing. We’ve actually been making a few really good Rufige Kru tracks, which was great because early tunes like Beachdrifta and Terminator were huge for me. That sound’s completely different to Subjective because we’ve been resampling old Metalheadz DAT pads from Timeless and leaning towards that DNA.”
How did you first get noticed by Goldie?
JD: “I first got noticed by TeeBee from Subtitles Records back in 2007. He put out our first Ulterior Motive single in 2009. Then I met Goldie at the SUNANDBASS festival in Sardinia and he told me to put the album out on Metalheadz, so we ended up releasing The Fourth Wall in 2014. He really liked the sound of the album and asked if I’d be interested in engineering his new record at the time, The Journey Man.”
I liked the engineering but I also liked the fact that I thought they were amazing. Knowing it wasn’t analogue, I felt there was warmth to his sound, a lot of which is down to James’ exterior hardware, which he builds himself.”
