Back To Mine - Tricky

Blowback - Tricky

For me, Tricky defines a very memorable period in time. If you’ll let me take you back to 1995 and remember if you will the release of the Island Records classic Maxinquaxe. I say timeless because I still listen to the album today and it doesn’t seem so dated. Tricky sprung from Bristol, and more specifically, Massive Attack's Blue Lines album, which is fairly apparent if you listen to the lyrics of this and his initial release, but nonetheless I loved it! Trip-hop was defined and I was wholeheartedly swept up in it. In 1996 he followed it up with the release of Pre-Millennium Tension and suddenly I wasn’t so sure anymore. It had some notable ...

Pre-millennium Tension: Limited Edition - Tricky

Massive Attack days to make it original, but different enough from Nearly God to make it accessible. Anyway, enough with the foreplay....let's get it on: Tricky starts off a lot of his albums with an energised track, and PMT is no exception. Vent is a beautifully atmospheric track. The chorus-of-sorts "Can't Hardly Breathe" is accompanied by a looped drum and synth track that is so suffocating and energetic that the introduction of a thrashy guitar towards the end is actually a pleasant breath of air. Its imagery isn't incredibly subtle, but all the more powerful for it. Christiansands sounds is a moody, Maxinquaye-esque track, with ...

Juxtapose - Tricky

and fairly musical hip-hop weave with one eye on the tune and the other on background clunkings ('Angels...' kept the clunking in the foreground and forgot about the tune). Tricky is also assisted here by the British MC Mad Dog - you kind of wish he'd looked further afield, because his contributions are the most tedious elements in any of these tracks. There are two tracks that are of such better quality that they suffer by association with the rest of the album, just because they're so much more interesting. 'For Real' and 'Contradictive' (which sounds like it has Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy chipping in with backing vocals) are ...