The first ever Blacktronika interview was the week of pandemic lockdown in 2020. We caught up with one of the most innovative artists in electronic music (and other areas), Goldie.  

Born in the UK, he originally made a name for himself as a bboy and graffiti artist (later as an actor and MBE), leading him to approaching the groundbreaking Reinforced Records, owned by 4Hero (Dego and Marc Mac). The label was on the cutting edge of creating a new form of music, sparked from the breakbeat rave scene in England at the time. 

Drum & Bass was the result of deconstructing ‘breaks’, the drum and instrumental parts of recordings (mostly funk & rock) that DJs (originally Kool Herc from the Bronx) would play back and forth to keep the dance floor going. With the use of samplers, producers could chop these breaks into pieces, rearranging them in their compositions, creating a new sonic DNA.

After a few records for Reinforced, he started the darker sounding, Metalheads, releasing the now classic and eternally innovative Timeless. 

This interview truly gets into the philosophical mind of this sonic genius.