Goldie is a Member of the British Empire these days. In the 90s he was decried as the bad boy of the UK music scene. Now, he’s lauded as some kind of patriarch. In this era, he’s back with a new project, Music for Inanimate Objects, a collaboration with James Davidson, an engineer and producer affiliated to Metalheadz.

It begins with Midnight Monsoon, a melancholic shuffler with violins luxuriating into swelling melodies and muted trumpets fading in arpeggiated reveilles. There are some lovely breakbeat vocals on Find Your Light and Stay, the kind of thing Mood Hut were aiming for on Always On, and I Saw Her Last Summer features a hook that immediately burrows into your brain. However, applying heavily-reverbed pianos as a way of communicating heavy emotion, on Silent Running, doesn’t feel that effective anymore, and the reliance on delayed snatches of violin wears thin towards the end. That said, this is Goldie’s best work in years; a well-crafted, cerebral package with nods to ambient, jazz and Goldie’s own work in drum’n’ bass, jungle and hardcore. This is music for the thinking person’s inanimate object.

Robert Bates