b. Topher LaFata, Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. Gold Chains is a serial collaborator who has worked with electronic wizards Kid 606 and Kit Clayton to create booty-quaking music for crowded house parties. The San Francisco-based producer/rapper forges a weird and wonderful hybrid of experimental musics. Although his first release, for the Orthlorng Musork label, proclaimed Gold Chains as "the number one face in hip-hop", LaFata admits he actually perceives himself in a lineage of art-punk bands and electronic artists. He claims his preferred listening as German techno and music that is dark and relaxing. Showing admirable dedication to the Gold Chains cause, LaFata claims to care almost exclusively about "beats, girls and clubs". Although he has been self-described as "the bedroom commander, the King of Love" Gold Chains has also stated that he eschews the extravagances of diamond rings and silk sheets in favour of spending his hard-earned dollars on DAT tapes, Moogs, ARP synthesizers and Roland 808s. Presumably intentionally, Gold Chain's boasts and gloats are often close to absurd and/or comedic - "Mountains of coke up in the VIP/Miles of gold ropes just hanging round me" he raps on "Mountains Of Coke' - but there are genuinely exciting things going on in his distillation of hip-hop, techno, ghetto tech and rock 'n' roll. Gold Chains has released music via PIAS, Kit Clayton and Suzanne Constable's Orthlorng Musork, Kid 606"s Tigerbeat6, and Adult's Ersatz Audio label. Intriguingly, the rapper is reported to have a degree in Cognitive Neuroscience.
DISCOGRAPHY: Young Miss America (PIAS 2003)****, with Sue Cie When The World Was Our Friend (Kitty-Yo 2004)***.

Encyclopedia of Popular Music
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