The Alchemist: The Best of 1992-2012 is an imperfect, overdue anthology of drum'n'bass pioneer
Goldie. It's more like an extensive sampling than it is a definitive introduction to the man's work. The emotive "Inner City Life," which charted in his native U.K., appears in the inferior form of the Baby Boys' (
Goldie and
Photek) downtempo mix. Other ephemera resurfaces unexpectedly -- there's not one but two tracks that appeared on the soundtrack for the 1997 film
The Jackal, including a forgotten remix of post-grunge band
Bush. Two
Saturnz Return-era singles are represented with
Armand Van Helden and
Grooverider remixes rather than
Goldie's originals. More tracks originate from 2009 than from any other year; though they're well constructed, they're less novel than the majority of the 1992-1997 material that did not make the cut. There's a disc-and-a-half's worth of crucial selections. "Terminator" (1992), where
Goldie developed the time-stretching method, still bends the mind. The presence of the low-slung "In My Soul," a 1993 collaboration with
4hero as Internal Affairs, is a pleasant surprise. Other no-brainer career highlights include two tracks from the
Rufige Cru EP Darkrider (1992), Metalheads' "Angel" (1993),
Goldie's mix of
Björk's "Isobel," and
Doc Scott's mix of "Kemistry." ~ Andy Kellman