In a world full of bland DJ personalities, Goldie is larger than life. He may seen like a mad-hatter at times but when he talks about his vision for the future its hard not to listen. With a new album on the way, a massive film project on the go and his label Metalheadz firing on all four cylinders Goldie had a lengthy chat with Fikuss.

Give us the update on Goldie for starters, new Metalheadz 05 has just come out in the last month or two, a new single from yourself with a Ruffidge Kru mix as well… what’s next on the agenda release wise?

Yeah I’ve just finished my artist’s album two months ago as well…which is the soundtrack for my first movie which I’m directing next year in Spring. I’ve spent eight years doing that film project so that finally coming in to some closure now. I’ve provided that with a really strong soundtrack, I’m very happy with it and I’ve just been painting since christmas getting a new collection of art together and a set of canvases which is kinda nice, something different, I’ll be showing those in the summer of next year and that’s it really. I’ve just been looking after the label and just being me.

Can you tell us anything about the movie?

It’s a fictional story but is based on various aspects of my life and people I used to see. Its an original screenplay about the struggle of a child and his mother in the hood, so to speak, and how he deals with an outragous stepfather, and how he grows up, and how he deals with that. Its really strong, you know, its more based on life experiences that I’ve had although its not a biography film at all, just a fictional story about two people’s struggle really.

Cool mate. Does your music actually feature as a subject in the film at all…?

No its just the soundtrack. Its just a soundtrack and that’s what I think it should be. I think that this music has just been used in a way that is commercially viable, you know, for washing up commercials; its never really been used to its full potential in terms of scores and stuff like that. Its something that I’ve always been heading towards really anyway…Um… without losing any integrity in the music that is; I think a lot of people have been compromising. Artists, compromise a lot with this musical art and I think it kinda has changed and become a lot cheesier over the years and I’ve been trying to keep it going somewhere else and I think there is still a lot of good music going around but its just not getting heard.

Do you think its because artists are kind-of finding the pressure of creating tracks just to try and please the dancefloor?

Well that’s what it is, and that’s the problem I have dealing with it. I think a lot of DJ’s and artists, a lot of people, are selling out and that’s something I’m not really into. I’m a leader, I’m not a follower. I think that’s what’s happened really I think a lot of people have shown their true colours over the past ten years and I’ve been in this fifteen years so I don’t see why I should want to change now.
I just think that if I start playing that shit then what? I just think it would be like “The last bat in the vault’s gone mate!” (laughs)

What other players in the scene do you really respect at the moment?

I really respect Break, a young 22 year old producer out of Hammersmith who is going to go really really well. A guy called Strider, who usually goes out as Heist. I think Klute’s a really good producer, Amit, those kinda guys. I’m not really into these other commercial guys, and I’m not going to mention those people’s names, but I think its just really not good. That’s about it really, I kinda went away from the scene for a while because I just kinda became jaded with what exactly has been going on and I think “Well you started this fight… you’ve gotta finish it!” I just think that its one of those things that if I’m seen not to be involved with it anymore then it all just seems to go to pop. You know people who I thought were going to do really well just didn’t really do anything which is why I stuck with the label because the labels the only last island of good real underground music with integrity and I’ll stick by that because that’s why I believe in to be honest.

So as far as other labels are there any that are exciting you?

Well not really I mean… (pause) there aren’t really. Signature, Calibre’s label, I like that album he’s just done, that’s brilliant. I like Soul:R that’s pretty good, Marcus’s label, there’s nothing really, you know, without blowing fucking smoke mate, but when you’ve done as much stuff as I’ve done over the last 12 years or so its very fucking hard to get really knocked out by any particular artist and label. Its either been done before or its been a rehash of something else. But I am excited about some of these new producers and what they’re possibly going to be doing. Also things happen in seasons, you can’t have it happening every year, I think drum & bass still is a baby because it hasn’t really grown up yet. Its only fucking ten years old really. Ask me in ten years time or in twenty-five years, you know what I mean?

Definitely.

Lets see where it is then. I just think that all we’re seeing now is people getting rehashed and its really in a state of turning and a thing can’t happen every year, things’ll blow-up and something else is going to happen. I’m still waiting for those other things to happen really.

I guess everyone’s sort of looked to you as a leader in a way…

I just think that its one of those things, I took time out as an artist to paint again and do other things and finish this fucking film. Its been driving me insane for the past eight years but part of that insanity is finding myself with it. A screenplay is like a very-very-very fucking slow record, it’s a lot longer and its tough to develop and you’ve also gotta wait for the characters to grow up in your own fucking head where as sound is something that has always matured in my head. I can bash it out in my head. I got the sound, I know what the riff is, I put it in there and I’ve got it and the subject’s done. With this I’ve had to wait for all these characters to develop.

I think that I took time out and all these people kind of thinking “what’s Goldie doing?” and people can be really critical in this country but with me, the thing is I’ve never really been able to be criticised for my music because I extensively took it from beyond where they’re scratching their fucking heads. So there’s no room for criticism in that sense. Its just a question of “well why did he stop doing it?” and I think now that will be revealed later on when you start seeing the film, you’ll understand how much fucking time and effort I put into that. However, while I’ve been doing that, I don’t think there’s really much that’s gone on, I mean Roni kind-of did his thing but I don’t think he did much after that. I was waiting for all of these people to blow up like him and Adam F and it never really happened. You kind of get deluded when that happens and you think “fuck come on! …someone?”

But that’s how it goes you know… Pendulum have blown up commercially but I don’t really rate that stuff at all I think its just cack. But that’s my own opinion I’m just really not into it. That to me is no different to General Levvy blowing up you know what I mean? Whatever, that’s my own opinion I’ll keep that to myself. There’s other people that are crossing over the music with other things but even that never really happened you know what I mean? I’m too much of an old critic (laughs), I’m getting to old for it.

I suppose in a way… Music is a very immediate thing, as you were saying, you can hear it in your head straight away and you can punch that out. Film really is something that has a bit of longevity to it in a way, because once you have made a film and get it out there its locked. A lot of tunes and singles that people release dissapear and producers, even reasonably well known ones, will sink without a trace over time but that’s not the case with film makers.

Goldie...

Yeah that’s it. You’ve got a good point there. I’m sorry to big you up mate but there’s not a lot of journalists who could actually point that out as well. People don’t think about prolonging shit. That’s the bottom li… You have got it right on the nail… that’s kind of it… I think that no matter what… I was just coming back from Britain and I was thinking about this, having one of those moments, and I thought, if all goes wrong tomorrow and god forbid anything should happen to me I could actually press play and play a lot of my music which has been very diverse over the years, a lot of it, and from a very long depth. I thought well at the end of all that surely I’d want to put it all of that into a film process and that’s what I’ve obviously done.

I’m approaching 40 this year and I don’t want to be 40 and not have achieved anything in my life and I kind of still feel as if there is an axe to grind. I don’t know if you heard about it on the net but I got this Professorship last month which has really made me wake up and think “fuck I actually got acknowledged for something”.

I never got fuck all at school, I never got anything! And then I get a fucking PHD when I’m forty” it felt good because it was just about media and music and art and I had to remind myself “fuck you actually did do that stuff”! I think its been very compressed in my mind and I just hope that at the end of all of this, hopefully… you know the reason why I wanted to get an extensive tour this time around, you know I’m out there for five fuckin weeks, I wanted to get an extensive tour because this time next year I probably won’t have time to do this as much and I want to concentrate on the film and I just hope I can leave something behind. Someone will say “fuck that film was absolutely brilliant” and it maybe will be the start of something great and new. But I think as an artist I have to go somewhere and I really have to go do something and I hope that when I get back this tiny little scene is somewhere better than it is now.

I’m a huge fan of drum & bass and I’ve studied film quite extensively, its what I want to do, I suppose I look around at the little scene we have in Melbourne and some of the main people that got everything up and running here like ATOM 1…

Yeah I remember ATOM 1 yeah…

Some of these guys have just dissapeared without a trace. There’s a lot of people who come along and then dissapear. Even the guys who do manage to get a few releases, they come and they go. I feel as though, for example after watching that old Talkin’ Headz doco the other day, its things like that that aren’t done enough. Where are all the films?

Music is music obviously and people will go out and will be able to find it if they search in the right place but no one takes it seriously enough to make films about it and really document it propperly.

That’s what it is… I think that people are not taking all of this new technology seriously enough. People realize that they can access music and they can access this technology quickly, but what they’re not doing is leaving enough evidence behind which is a problem. I have a massive problem with that and I think part of that problem for me, and I’m been genuinely happy because of it, is that I’ve been a bit dyslexic and I’ve never been able to use this stuff. I have always manipulated engineers and I’m always like “put it on tape! Don’t leave it on digital because what happens if the magnetic field around us changes by 2%? All those things will be gone!”

I’m always sketching on books, I’m always putting them on tape because this shit will be gone in a second and people forget that. Once you change that magnetic field everything’s gone. You see one thing I know is that my canvass; you can’t erase that. My tape; I can’t erase that and just generally pressing vinyl, making film, and video because at least its there you know. All this stuff with digital, I’ve always been weary of it, I’ve always been weary of the whole conspiracy of it all. The bigger picture and that whole big brother sort of thing and of how all that stuff can get fucked.

As an artist I think we are the last bastions man we have to do something and like you said, some people can be erased by it so quickly and they’re like suppressed memories and if we don’t try an dig far enough back in our minds and keep those memories then we are in trouble. One of my favorite films, and it always will be, is Magnolia because its such a beautiful fucking screenplay. I think it’s really good, I mean that whole process of being about confession and about people that have just been so pushed to confess.

I’ve learned so much in the last eight years of making this film that I just think that one of the most powerful messages in making this film is that if your not with people on a journey, the memory is probably one of the most powerful things that we’ve ever been given, and if you’re not with people to remind you of that then you might as well be dreaming. That’s one of the messages I’m going to be getting across in this film, about the power of memory, and how its held and how we hold those images.

I’ve always tried to be honest with it, and I’ve always been millitant and hard about the people around me and have always been over critical because I can see the bigger picture and I can see what happens when we don’t take time with it all. There’s a whole new generation out there that are kind of running and rushing to it but they’ve just got to understand a little bit more. You’ve kinda got to put the work in you know.

I couldn’t agree more. Its something that became apparent to me when I read the repress of Brian Belle-Fortune’s “All Crews” book; no matter how many websites your name might appear on… Whenever the content on those websites comes down all those names are going to vanish too so its important to actually take the time to release stuff propperly as a book… put it on paper.

Yeah that’s right. That’s it man, its what you’ve got to remember.
I’m hoping this time when I come out…. It has changed over there a lot (in Australia); things started up, they kind of went up, and blew-up and then went down again and all this other stuff happened and its kind of sorting its self out probably. Now might be the right time to come, I think last year wasn’t the right time to come.

Things have changed quite a bit since then…

I think things have to change really. It will be nice to come out there and play and just sort of see how different the people are and just be me really and give you all a good old ironing out. I’m going to let you know what IS available.

I think things have solidified over here and the vibe’s starting to get a lot better at all the parties…

See you know what that is… I blame that change on a lot of people (DJ’s) coming out there and not really doing what they were supposed to do. I think a lot of people have sold it short and I’m just going to come out there and I’m gonna iron everyone out (laughs). Give everyone a real good dynamic journey.

With all the interviews that you guys do and all the coverage in the press about all that sort of shit I always like to ask people in my interviews about secret shit that people mightn’t necessarily have heard about…

Teebee’s got a secret love for chess apparently, Matrix and Dynamite both admitted that they’d love to be in the food and resteraunt biz… You’re a bit of a renessaince man, with your past in Graffiti, Music, and Film what other passions have you got going on that we don’t know about?

Apart from becoming a Professor, that’s quite funny but a secret love I guess is playing Rainbow 6 on X-Box. I just go on there and I just kill loads of people with my friends. I am a big X-Box-Live fan. I’m on the whole live gaming thing I think that’s great. There’s a game called Rainbow 6 which in that world is pretty cool and I just go on there as Goldicuss and I just go on there and have a fuckin laugh. Its just like paintballing online basically I just go on there and get my head popped by an eleven year old.

copyright (c) by: Tim Schumann - August 2005 - Interview @ Kombat.com