MOTHER

By Mariam Jibril

Goldie is the kind of artist who likes to break the rules, and Mother is a perfect example of that. From Goldie’s 1998 album, Saturnz Return, Mother is an hour-long composition inspired by some deeply personal experiences that takes drum ‘n’ bass music across orchestral and jungle landscapes and into emotionally raw storytelling. Rather than make another high-energy club record that would be the more economically viable route, Goldie made something more challenging: sharp and thoughtful kaleidoscopic music that captures most of the emotional complexity of trauma, abandonment, grief, and forgiveness. Mother remains bold even twenty-one years later because of the way it brings so many strong emotions to the forefront when most of the electronic music peers were avoiding them.

Mother has an interesting way of starting. It begins without a rush to make a beat. It possesses a weightless and eerie mood. It hovers in that space for a while, almost like a memory. Goldie makes the memory emotionally full using sounds and textures positioned in the background. There is a cinematic scope of emotion. Gradually throughout, drum ‘n’ bass starts to build along with the distinct pressure of the music. When the unpredictable happens, and the beat finally drops, it is like a slow buildup of an emotional pressure valve that has been building for several minutes. Different and interesting is what makes Goldie’s music special. He doesn’t think of the classical and jungle musical worlds as separate. He makes them talk to each other.

The vocal performance incorporates yet another layer of vulnerability. With its imperfections, Goldie's voice lacks the sheen and over-prettifying that cover up and distance each of us from the most intense and effective kind of truth. The fragile vocals become more desperate and shockingly more confronting as the song progresses, reflecting more and more the struggle to recall long-forgotten, painful memories. The combination of Goldie and Charlemagne's vocals and the scratched strings adds yet another layer that makes each sound feel more like an injured voice. Of the scratched strings themselves, the cello in particular expresses an aural sadness that completely punctuates the very last passages of the song. There is nothing in any of the vocals that feels professionally packaged, in the traditional sense of pop music. There are no vocal acrobatics. Rather, there are vocals meant to peel back the layers.

The core of Mother is a complex emotional expression of Goldie’s relationship with his mother and the abandonment he felt as a child many years ago. The song doesn’t reduce those feelings to simple anger. It captures the emotions of vulnerability, the confusion of the feelings, pain, and longing, and adds the attempt at healing and forgiveness to the pictures. This is all captured in the arrangement of the song, which takes the listener on a roller coaster ride of emotional peaks and valleys with the extreme dynamic shifts between the tension and relief. It is easy to think the song is overly long, but because of its length and Goldie's choice to let the emotions unfold slowly instead of the common practice of 3-minute songs, the song feels longer and more powerful than the average song. Mother will take the average music listener outside their comfort zone and ask them to stay there to confront their discomfort.

Today, listening to Mother presents the same difficulty it did back then: the effort of processing a track that blurs genres, flirts with many, and tears them all apart. It leans heavily on jungle and drum’n’bass, but incorporates further elements of classical music, ambient, and progressive large-format electronic works. It then takes a step further and incorporates emotional spoken word. The combination of elements across the spectrum of sounds available brings a sense of beauty, discomfort, and chaos with an intimate emotion that can be lost, overwhelming, or cathartic. Listening to the track demands concentration, and the layering of emotional elements creates a powerful draw that pulls the listener in.

Mother is an artistic statement beyond a typical composition, capturing an unimaginable level of expression from the artist that impacts the industry for the better. Its structure and emotional honesty, combined with the orchestral level of expression used, draw a sense of power and clarity to its place in the golden era of jungle and drum’n’bass. Refusing to remain within boundaries, Mother presents a unique perspective of electronic music, and, although challenging, it is an important piece of work to listen to in the genre. Goldie’s composition will never bore and will always remain essential listening.