Perhaps this concert is coming a few years too late. The artist is out of his platinum status. But as usual, Sixteen Tons, which boasts one of the most respected catalogue of invited musicians in Moscow, is opening up the season with a precious event. As precious as gold, you could say. On Sept. 13th Goldie, the man with a mouth full of gold-capped teeth, former graffiti artist, petty thief and one of the founders of mid-'90s craze jungle, is to enter Sixteen Tons' smallish stage with someone called MC Rage. All the usual complaints about the venue remain - for without a doubt there will be far more music-lovers than space or air.

One album in 1995 was all it took to boost Goldie into musical history. The double CD "Timeless," which was the first major-label drum 'n' bass album, served as a launching pad for the development of a subculture. And this album is still perhaps the most fully realized piece of work the genre has ever seen. An acquaintance with trip-hoppers Massive Attack a few years prior to "Timeless" helped form Goldie's musical reputation and future, as did his much talked-about creative relationship with Bjork, which later grew into a canceled engagement. In retrospect, the couple was on the cutting edge of the times, perhaps even standing out as the most important happening in drum 'n' bass.

Born to a Scottish mother and a Jamaican father in 1965, Goldie's youth was spent in neighborhood crime until he found his calling in graffiti art, which took him to Miami in search of his vandalistic heroes. His name and image all date back to the time when he was a reseller of peculiar golden teeth, both stateside and in the U.K. Goldie didn't actually invent any musical style. Rather, added the finishing touches and completed the image that the spontaneously evolving half-hour hypnotic beats and jagged rhythms of drum 'n' bass demanded. They had already been deafening London clubbers for some time then. However only with the appearance of Goldie's spontaneous b-boy insight did it become evident what the club phenomenon was all about.

Later Goldie used this image in his forays into cinema - predominantly playing bad guys, like in the most recent James Bond flick. Despite the waning popularity of drum 'n' bass, Goldie's third album, "Sonic Terrorism," is supposedly due out this month. And strangely enough, as the organizers put it "by coincidence," the musician's tour in support of the album is to begin right here in Moscow, making Sixteen Tons a hot ticket next Friday night.