Goldie has always been larger than life, and his giant ambition took jungle from an underground concern to music that could sketch out cityscapes in epic widescreen. That ambition is undimmed on this 100-minute-plus solo album, his first in nine years. As well as sleek and well-heeled junglism, there’s trip-hop, piano-led lounge jazz, restless, Pharrell-ish funk on Castaway, and even, on Tu Viens Avec Moi?, pleasantly noodly Balearic soft rock.
But as the running time indicates, Goldie’s weakness is not always being able to corral that ambition, and, not helped by rote production, there is some interminable material here. It bottoms out with Redemption, which is like being stuck on a Pro Evo loading screen for 18 long minutes. The vocalists are in fine voice, with the Sampha-ish Tyler Lee Daly a great find, but they are allowed to drift into vague melodies. Even the jungle tracks such as Prism, while propulsive and admirably contemporary, lack the jeopardy and psychic disharmony of the genre’s best.
