Gold Chains

Someone had betta give that honky chubby little whitebwoy Gold Chains a proper review, and I can see that the task is gonna fall to me. Good. Now perhaps I was unfairly prepped for this gig, having spent a most enjoyable half-hour downstairs by the fag machine interviewing the bespectacled man himself, hearing him liken a woman's 'coochie' to a maze and a Rubik's Cube, and giving very precise instructions on how to bring your hoochie-momma to a thigh-dripping climax - instructions which I fear are most necessary for the readers of the publication for which the interview is destined. He talks of cubes, figures eights, circles, lines, with delicate tongue.

Now, anyone who applies such mathematical precision to that most organic of acts is quite clearly gonna have the necessary hoo-hah to create truly tricksy and complicated and ass-wiggling beats, wouldn't you say? And that is what these Rockist, Fonda 500 types (See: Review by Fiona Fletcher ) do not understand. They cannot comprehend the complex magic that can be woven from samples and rhythms and voice. They cannot cope with anything more intricate than a thudding 4/4 beat overlaid with that most cumbersome and dreary of instruments, the guitar.

Fortunately the front of the gig is filled with those who, like myself, do not run from the sight of a sampler and a Mac and a microphone, but instead achieve a boner of Eiffel-like proportions, and we, I must say, are truly groovy. There is Spitroastin' Soph with her Liz Taylor fringe curling around her eyelashes, and there is Frances' (Al)Ex with glitter all over his befreckled face, and there is a duffle-coated Hungry Hamilton and there is Flyboy in white salwaar kameez, and we're all grinding and punching the air and… yes.

And yes, there is Gold Chains. And he is rapping over cheap samples and dirty basslines and the rest. And he is shortly joined by two mini-skirted minxes, one of whom has a jolie-laide ugly-beautiful angular face, and a brunette mullet, and her dance is all made up of jerky lines, and one of whom… doesn't, but that's ok too. The girls sing and they dance and they catfight, and Gold Chains hoarsely delightedly MCs about mountains of coke and an Everest of coochie and coming from San Francisco and rockin' da parti, and we all dance, jerky, enchanted.

New single 'The Game', all about relationship lies and love dysfunction, is aired, and where I, philistinesque, could not appreciate it on record, deviating as it does from the limo ghetto-tech glitch booty bass we've come to expect from GC into a Timbaland-esque sparse somewhat garagey slice o'pie, live it takes on new heights. The swift changes of rhythm and direction don't, (as in pussy-eating), prove a distraction, but rather a complete delight, shocking the pedestrian brain and pedestrian hips into new shapes, new forms: and, on my return to it, the single gleams.

Reference points? GC's buddies Kid 606 and Cex, natch. Am loath to mention the word 'Peaches' these days but there's something in those sleazy crunchy beats that is not dissimilar. Hints of DJ Assualt; the same sparkle of excitement that runs through the radio when Missy talks about shaving her cha-cha, and.

And this reminds me of what gigs are all about, and why I endure the Monarch and the Camdenites and the warm beer and the gossip and the sniping: because of this party feeling, this thrill, and excitement, knowing I won't be able to hear the next day, not giving a fuckdamn, turning eardrums to the speaker and hands towards the mike. This sensation of sex and falling and caring-not-a-jot; this elemental spin towards some primal shit that made us all dance round fires in loincloths, or whatevah tha fuck: just some chubby li'l whiteboy teasing choppy beats out of electronic devices, and watching him talking about pleasure, and pussy, and dancing, and dirt, and joy, and staying out late, and grinding pretty strangers, and jerking his arms left-to-right, till we do too.

New electronic noises abound, and it's they that soundscape our shitty urban tube-travelling lives, them and feral chatting: not guitars, not harmonies, not sixties throwback reference points: just buzz and grind and wowsa and grind. Don't mind the Rockists; they'll die out soon, their kind is old, and will pass away. And dancing on the ash will be Gold Chains, whirling a titanium Powerbook above his head, and me, prostrate before him, twitching my hips. Join us.