Timeless (The Remixes) — Goldie (2023)
Re-engineering a monument
By Rafi Mercer
Some albums are finished when they’re released. Others are never finished — they just wait for the world, the technology, and the artist to catch up. Timeless (The Remixes) is very much the latter. Released in 2023, nearly three decades after the original Timeless reshaped British music, this isn’t a victory lap or an anniversary indulgence. It’s a revisiting by someone who understands exactly what they built — and what it can still become.
The original Timeless was never just a drum & bass record. It was orchestral, emotional, architectural. Goldie treated jungle not as club material, but as a language capable of tenderness, grief, romance, and scale. That’s why it endured. And it’s why, in 2023, revisiting it made sense — not to modernise it, but to relisten to it.
What happened to make this remix project possible is crucial. Goldie didn’t hand these tracks to trend-chasing producers looking to “update” them. Instead, the project was approached as restoration and reinterpretation, closer to how classical music revisits a score. The stems were revisited with modern clarity. Space was reconsidered. Dynamics were respected. The emotional intent was treated as sacred.
The remixes stretch Timeless outward rather than forward. Rhythms are loosened or reframed, not brutalised. Bass is deeper, warmer, more controlled — built for contemporary systems that can finally reproduce what early ’90s studios could only imagine. Pads breathe more. Orchestral elements sit with patience. Silence is allowed back in.
What’s striking is how adult this record feels. Not nostalgic. Not aggressive. Mature. This is music made by someone who has lived with his own work for nearly 30 years and knows which parts to leave untouched. The drama remains, but it’s less frantic. The urgency has softened into assurance.
For listeners rooted in the LTJ Bukem / intelligent drum & bass continuum, Timeless (The Remixes) lands beautifully. It reinforces the idea that this culture aged upwards, not out. That jungle didn’t disappear — it refined itself. It moved indoors. Into listening rooms. Into high-resolution systems. Into quieter moments where complexity can be appreciated without chaos.
Played today, this album feels almost luxurious. Not in price or polish, but in time. Time to hear the layers. Time to feel the weight of strings against breakbeats. Time to recognise that British electronic music once dared to be emotional — and still does, when treated with care.
This isn’t about reclaiming relevance.
It’s about honouring continuity.
Timeless was never frozen in 1995.
It was always in motion — and in 2023, it finally had the space to move properly.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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A reflective album review of Goldie’s Timeless (The Remixes) (2023) — a mature, system-aware reimagining of a landmark that proves drum & bass didn’t age out, it aged inward.
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goldie, timeless, drum and bass, intelligent jungle, listening culture, electronic music, tracks and tales
