he arc of quality of nearly every musician I’ve ever enjoyed implies that there will be an eventual decline, it’s only a matter of which downward spiral path they choose; whether they evolve and marginalise themselves, stay ploughing the same old sound, bore people or lose their initial creative drive. Even though it’s normally only his debut Maxinquaye that regularly appears in canonical top albums of all time lists, throughout the mid 90s Tricky was constantly moving and evolving into something unique. For a short time, he kept ahead of potential media backlash, by continually working with new artists and moving towards new sounds. He escaped existing definitions, provoking the same media that had built him up so quickly to invent a genre name to describe his sound.

But then his work began to slip and became increasingly pedestrian as he settled into the industries write-record-release-tour hamster wheel. Over time, he lost the singular and independent vision and work ethic that he had employed in the early years of his career. These changing priorities, and his troubled relationships with various record labels, robbed Tricky of the certain something that informed his early musical output. Here, then, is his story: a year-by-year account of the incredible weed smoking, trip-hop denying, paranoid, schizophrenic world of Tricky.

1991

As the power shifted in Bristol from the Wild Bunch days of Miles Johnson and Nellee Hooper to 3D and (to a much lesser extent) Daddy G as Massive Attack, a more commercial, cleaner production sound and professional work ethic was created. When the group’s debut LP, Blue Lines, was first released it gave the impression that Tricky was merely a hired hand with a smart mouth; an unstable element at the core of Massive. From all appearances, it seemed that Tricky barely had any input into the main studio committee decisions (if any), only co-writing and MCing on three tracks: "Five Man Army", "Blue Lines" and "Daydreaming". With hindsight, it’s easy to see his input into the latter track was much more than wordplay with 3D. His signature unconventional wobbly wheeled shopping trolley drum loop and Shara Nelson’s repetition of snatches of the rapped lyrics here were maybe the spark of inspiration for his own debut. There are important differences, however. On Blue Lines, Tricky's vocals are astonishingly clear and well pronounced in his endearing Bristol accent, his lyrics at their most flippant and even funny at points.

Perhaps as he began to mine his flaws in preparation for his debut album, instead of the one-upmanship bred into him by his sound system roots, he began to alter his vocals. Did he subconsciously feel a little self-conscious about this honesty and obscure his own words with mumbling and foggy production? Or had his spliff intake reached such epic proportions that the damage began to be audible?

Either way, Tricky’s first solo cut, "Nothing's Clear", slipped out silently later on that year on a Bristol charity compilation album. A collaboration with Geoff Barrow, then a Massive Attack engineer and soon to be one of the brains behind Portishead, the material was much rougher than what Massive Attack had been doing and kept closer to his own musical parentage. It's a 2-tone moody schizophrenic number, which still stands as one of best his recordings to date; skanking between Jericho blasts of horn, echoing rim shots, neighbour abusing, speaker fucking bass which sits next to a calm Satie-like piano melody.

1993

When his debut single, "Aftermath", (co-produced by Massive engineer Kevin Petrie) was officially released, I wasn't particularly enamoured with it; I thought it was alright, but not good enough to go out and buy in those pre-Napster "music costs money, and you buy it in shops" era. I literally paid the price later at a record fair when I had to pick up the promo 12" for the sake of completion. Its jazzy keys, rolling drums and whistling flutes were too clean and structured, and even with the abstracts creeping in late in the song, it's nowhere near as otherworldly or emotive as it's reputed to be, even back then. The fuzzy staticy vinyl trimmings of the production and Mark Stewart's (Stewart engineered and contributed to the original demo, but was only credited as playing keyboards on release) wandering whisperings prove to be integral to Tricky’s sound.

One of my main issues with the track is Martina's vocal performance, Tricky might have found an incredible vocalist and the perfect blank canvas/muse for his lyrics but on "Aftermath" she sounds too remote, too uninvolved. Her voice is without accent, distant and bored (in a 'I'm not arsed about what I'm doing' way). Her uninspiring vocal performance, plus the fact that the B-sides offered only slight mutations on the original song, allowed me to pass this single over easily. As we were very soon to hear, however, Martina was about to become a unique vocalist; profoundly English, young, alive and comfortable tackling both the drawl of the blues, spitting male hip-hop or cooing over arrhythmic beats.

1994

The second single "Ponderosa", a co-production with Howie B, is more deserving of the praise that was lavished upon "Aftermath". This was the song that announced that a new mad pop genius had arrived. A slice of homemade psychedelic dread, “Ponderosa” is a far rougher recorded beast, combining elements of blues, jazz and soul into a much irregularly shaped package. It retains the fresh feel of a cluttered live home studio atmosphere, collecting scratching, toy pianos going haywire and indecipherable odd noises coming out of my left-hand speaker. The cracked music box intro breaks off upon collision with the bone on bone clank of a beat sounding suspiciously like something from Tom Waits Bone Machine. The influence of Waits’ post Heartattack and Vine music on Tricky, though he’s never fully acknowledged it as far as I’m aware, seeps all the way through to the present day.

Tricky began to receive offers of remix work based on this early promise, and soon would have an eclectic queue of artists waiting for his hit and miss mix favours. With Howie B still in tow he tackled the world-pop bland fest of Angelique Kidjo's "Agolo" and switched it up at least several gears. The remix works brilliantly, reinventing the song with an inspired lift from Primal Scream and The Orb's "Higher than the Sun". This moves it on from a rather ordinary MIDI-sounding backing to something broader and more tribal, as the singsong vocals layer each other riding the huge drums and the occasional single bass note which punctuates the chorus. But, just when you think that Tricky had found the magickal formula to polish turds, his other mix of this year showed he could be as lazy as he was clever, adding only a hip-hop beat to Leena Conquest's "Boundaries" and its clichéd 'give peace a chance' lumpy acid-jazz.

By the time Massive Attack's Protection dropped, Tricky was already getting a bit antsy at having to work with a committee of vocalists and engineers. The cinematic Vangelis sheen of "Eurochild" doesn't sound like anything Tricky had done before or has done since, so I think it's safe to assume it's a Massive track with him only helping out on vocals. Both he and 3D sound strong here, matching each others flow and pace, actually rapping as opposed to what was soon to come on Maxinquaye. Like "Daydreaming" was before it, "Karmacoma" is obviously a buffed up Tricky demo; a stalling looped rhythm with a manipulated sine wave serving as melody. Far more entertaining though was the Hendrix-on-the-Moon-isms of the Portishead’s Experience remix of "Karmacoma" (and the Bristol groups always wondered why they were lumped in together by the press). After the glassy-eyed hip-hop of his work this year, these two collaborations seemed like almost a step backwards. But it didn't take long for him to turn on his old friends once he'd got Maxinquaye in the can. In early 1995, Face Magazine’s interview with him reveals that he had "animosity towards them [Massive Attack] for saying they co-wrote 'Karmacoma' when I did all the music and most of the words, and they've got animosity towards me for doing my own thing". This was the start of a trend for Tricky, with Massive Attack being only the first of many collaborators who would be pushed to the curb.

1995

Martina’s presence on both the "Aftermath" and "Ponderosa" singles were credited as merely performing the 'Honey Coated Vox', painting her as a guest performer on the very records that she had made so absorbing. By the time of release of the third single credited to Tricky, "Overcome", the credits stated it was performed by “Tricky and Martine” and, more tellingly, the inlay picture saw them physically tied together. There is a world of difference between the standard practice of offering two perspectives in duets like, say, Sparkle and R Kelly's "Be Careful" and what Tricky was doing on Maxinquaye. The LP captured the space between Martina and Tricky's vocals becoming blurred (created through layering, mixing and repetition), as the voice (and vision) became male and female; hermaphroditic as opposed to vaudeville camp back and forth. But, the real genius lay in Tricky's ability to highlight the separate perspectives of their experiences whilst still retaining that one vocal persona.

With the exception of Prince and the songs recorded in his, short-lived but incredible, Camille guise, most artist's particular strain of androgyny has more to do with camp, imagery and PR packaging than capturing the essence of two separate entities as one in song form. While Bolan, Bowie, Molko, O'Dowd and Anderson may have toyed with and manipulated imagery and sexuality (to varying degrees of success) none of them ever released music that you could truly call androgynous. This is not to underestimate their influence or accuse them of being charlatans, but this androgyny normally only reveals itself in video clips or magazine shoots. Tricky is also certainly guilty of using/abusing this type of imagery, but the result is much darker and more confusing (take for example the images of Tricky coyly holding handguns in a wedding dress with Martina as the bored groom). The cover of the "Black Steel" single pushed this idea a step further by morphing them into a hybrid; from '95 to '98 Tricky referred to Tricky (the name on the record spine) as being both Martina and himself.

Although it seems to be generally accepted as fact that Maxinquaye is an exotic, erotic and darkly sexual dialogue between Tricky and Martina, delving below the surface there are other ways to see it (it’d be rather obviously Freudian to name a record all about making sweet love/humping after his dead mother). It's not as simple as straight up boning, it’s about the complications of intimacy; a very different, complex and far more personal thing. From the perspective of a child, can there be ever be a bigger loss that that of your own mother? How much closer can you ever be to someone than once actually being a part of them? That is the reason why he named it after his mother, who took her own life when he was only four. The loss of this intimacy and the fear of the possibility for internal damage clashes here with the innate human desire for communion, which clashes again with the feelings of weakness and disgust (at the self and the others) with the desperation for this familiarity.

An often used reference, used in the defence of the LP as being primarily sexual, is the line 'When we fuck we'll hear beats' from one of its three central pieces “Overcome” (along with “Suffocated Love” and “Feed Me”) which was the opening track and third single. But when pushed on the sexual nature of his work by Melody Maker in a 1995 interview Tricky stated, "Ah no, it don't say fuck, it says 'funk'. That's to do with trust. As in, me and you, when I trust you totally I'll show you myself. I must admit, it does sound like 'fuck' though, dunnit? Sorry to disappoint you about this sex thing." In retrospect, the ‘funk’ line seems like it was just added to rhyme with the more powerful following line ‘When we trust there’ll be treats’ which lends support to the idea of intimacy as opening oneself up to another person creating a more rewarding relationship. This air of keeping the rest of the world at bay is reflected by the distant desolate denuded sound of “Overcome”, overwhelming the listener with space and ribbed with a closely miced patty-cake type beat. When Martina opens the LP with 'You sure you wanna be with me? I've nothing to give", this is Tricky registering his bitterness and disinterest for everyone through her.

There is a rather organic fluidity to “Suffocated Love”, its live bass playing, scratching, plucked guitar and bleeps streaking through the track, while dissipating sound shadows move across the song like a sparkler’s trail. Tricky’s chilled vocals here sound they could’ve been lifted from back in the Massive days- you can make out every word! He comes across as almost light-hearted, filling the song with juxtapositions of tenderness, violence, frankness (‘It's too good, it's too nice’), fear (‘I keep her warm but we never kiss’) and an utter lack of trust (‘She says she's mine, I know she lies’). Martina gives a shadier delivery with heavier lines like ‘Will you spend your life with me and stifle me? I know why the caged bird sings…I know why’. Despite the confessional tone and glimpses of his personal life through the lyrics, he acts as if we, the listeners, are prying (‘You ask what is this? Mind your business’).

The lonely windchimes of closer “Feed Me” features Maxinquaye’s strongest vocal performance, Martina sounds both awake and interested alongside his best lyrics to date (hacked from his own “Nothing’s Clear”). The précis is the strength in the union of a relationship, but unavoidably the tensions, insecurities and needs of the individuals will stretch this bond to either become a resented routine or for it to fall apart acrimoniously. The confusion between need and antipathy is the backbone of this LP and is summed up in the line ‘I despise you, damn you, dream you, I love you but still nothing’s clear’. The whole issue of Tricky recycling lines from his own work reeks of laziness, and, although he was to lose this reprocessing habit with the increased workload of the next few years, it casts a shadow over the songs in question.

The host of imitators that lined up soon after Maxinquaye's release frequently failed to grasp the real strengths of the recording and began producing music based on what they perceived Tricky was doing. Though much of Maxinquaye's initial shock and universal critical acclaim was based on the supposedly raw, alien and original production. It hasn't stood the test of time for me. These days those jarring arrangements and dissonant edges that snagged the imagination have been smoothed down; sadé-d out. Yes, even “Strugglin’”. And, because of this, we can partly blame Tricky for the mediocre trope of that all-too-familiar 90s sound of a breathless female vocalist over a hip-hop beat. Trip-hop became a dirty word to many of the artists who were being wrongly given the label, simply because they weren’t working within a traditional band format. Additionally, at the time, Tricky was regularly incensed at the claims that he sounded like any other act (especially fellow Bristollians). In the future, he was to claim that all those acts had in fact been influenced by him and that some had even ripped off and diluted his beats. Though, by the time he'd released Maxinquaye, he was already working with a harsher, looser, more experimental production style. That's why Maxinquaye’s an important LP and not a great one.

The more press he did, the weirder his interviews and his public persona became. During the pre- and early-Maxinquaye interviews he talked casually about his past and seemed quite genuinely surprised at people's perceptions of his music and the interest in him. As time went on, he seemed to almost play to the image of confused, temperamental genius- culminating in both amusing photo sessions and paranoia filled rants (see the cover and article from April 95’s NME with Tricky wearing plastic horns).

Releasing "Black Steel", with its loud guitar driven sound, opened him up into a wider marketplace and the long-fringed indie-boy market. This Public Enemy cover is powerful, in that it dislocates and uses only the first verse of the original track, and is half-sung half-rapped by Martina, convoluting the original meaning into something else entirely. The shortening of the title is incredibly apt, as what is left of the lyrical content in the LP version is a black man's statement of defiance (”Black Steel”) without the social circumstances that demanded this action of the aftermath (the latter half of the title "...in the Hour of Chaos"). The "Been Caught Steeling Mix” is a little more live sounding than the original, the instrumentation freer and more ragged replacing the tight edits.

With the first four singles from Maxinquaye, almost all of the b-sides on offer were merely confused, befuddled reworkings of the a-sides. And, as mildly interesting as it was to see the tracks devolved and deconstructed, they weren't anywhere near as good as the LP versions. The Hell EP signalled Tricky spreading his wings, beginning to further loosen his style. The EP was credited to Tricky Vs The Gravediggaz, and featured two collaborations with the RZA/Prince Paul side project as well as "Hell is Round The Corner" and a remix. "Psychosis", despite its cast, is absolutely nowhere near traditional hip-hop, employing a steam-powered dark, stagnant, grinding loop over a broken click track. It does sound grimy, but not in the normal way we now associate that word with hip-hop; it’s unclean. The apocalyptic freestyle contained within seems to stem from the fact that Tricky had recently discovered that the devil-spawn from Rosemary's Baby was named Adrian (his real name is Adrian). The second track, "Tonite is a Special Nite (Chaos Mass Confusion Mix)", is a much lighter affair; an airy piano driven tune with a deranged party feel. The repeated 'let's just record' vocal sample from Tricky emphasises the tracks ramshackle improvisation. It was really from this point onwards that he began to release material at a brisk pace, with little care as to whether it was possible to flood the market or to bankrupt your fans.

Thus, with his Island contract stating that he could release music under aliases and work with other artists on different labels as and when he pleased, Tricky began to take advantage of this clause soon after the release of his debut. The first major group he collaborated with, outside of the The Hell EP was Whale, a Swedish pop rock hip-hop hybrid with a female vocalist. Best known for their medium sized hit with a firestarting monster chorus monster, "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe", they collaborated and released four low profile tracks which represented a more jocular, and dare I say it, fun side of Tricky farting about in the studio. The acoustic guitar and melodica of the comedic seduction song "Kickin'" (the opening track on their album We Care) saw Tricky singing backing on a song with a chorus that went ‘I cannot help that I think you’re really kickin’. Not exactly the cry of a pained emotional freak, as he also playfully rapped the chorus of the bouncy "Young Dumb n' Full of Cum". More in line with his advertised persona was "Tryzanice". Lyrically recycling all of “Abbaon Fat Tracks” from Maxinquaye, its dark cloudy backing sounded very similar in feel to the Gravediggaz group efforts. Finally, washing up on a B-side was "The Now Thing", a semi-sentient hazy hookah vibed song with broken guitar melodies and Cia and Tricky unleashing off the cuff and amusing made-up rhymes. This idiosyncratic lighter style was a precursor of his ill-fated, but brilliant, work with Neneh Cherry and like that, this would stand out as one of his finest moments. On the other hand, it sounds like he may have spent longer cashing the cheque for remixing Luscious Jackson (lady friends of the Beastie Boys) than he spent actually doing it. Ransacking “Here” for the ‘Love/Hate mix’, he stripped the irritatingly party perkiness of the original down to bass, heavily processed drum rolls and a few offbeat noises (guitar strum, whistle) and whilst this may make it less annoying, it’s still not anywhere near interesting enough to return to.

The first fruit of his quick to sink vanity label, Durban Poison, was the low-key release of the I Be the Prophet EP under the pseudonym of Starving Souls. A beatless, but stiffly plucked, cello sound is lain against a bassy melody and punctured by sharp shanks of Psycho high-end strings, as Tricky and Martina take turns murmuring, then duetting, lyrics about time, visions and need. This was a deliberately harsher sidestep from his more melodic past, as this is brittle and initially unrewarding, stumbling instead of flowing. This was backed by a pointless ‘…(with drums)’ remix which adds only a lonely school orchestra percussion to the original and a Tricky-by-numbers cover of Depeche Mode’s “Judas”, titled here as “If You Want My Love” (it also appeared on the U.S. release of Nearly God). To a casual observer this may have looked like a radical dip in the quality control department at Tricky Towers, but the praise he was receiving for being a maverick and an independent spirit was leading him to a more reactionary means of working. Plus, the carte blanche from Island led to his reluctance to feel that he was part of a movement and pushed him to distance himself from expectations.

"Pumpkin" was an average album track, and a very peculiar choice for the sixth (even Britney wouldn’t push her luck that far!) single from Maxinquaye. It also provided Tricky with his oddest sleeve art; Tricky and mates in skirts carrying vibrators outside a café from the future whilst Martina and her mates dressed as female 007s with guns with an unaccredited paraphrased KRS-1 quote on the cover. Could it have been some sort of statement on demasculination? The music didn’t offer much of an answer, being something like a ballroom waltz take on the Cocteau Twins, with Alison Goldfrapp's wordless torch song built around a gloomy Corgan guitar and drum sample. Tricky offers a brief soliloquy of dissociation from the world around him:

I refuse to understand,
You go your way and I'll see mine,
How'd you like yourself?
You don't know yourself.

It seemed even more out of place, considering the contradictory styles of the B-sides. A one-off collaboration with fellow stoner NY alt hip-hop act (before it was cool) New Kingdom entitled "Moody Broody Buddhist Camp" was, at least on a rhythmic level, a straightforward hip-hop track. But with freewheeling noisy loops of fuzzed-up vocals and dying pac-man bloops fighting it out with a wheezy accordion riff prevents it from ever being played on, say, Hot97. Reportedly they disowned the song on release, unhappy with what Tricky had done to it. But the real revelation here was "Pumpkin (Ambient)" (originally available on one of the Macro Dub Infection Collections), an incredible self-reinvention of the original, this is what a remix should be. A transfixing sound, reminiscent of a lion’s throaty growl and someone popping a handful of bubble wrap as a beat, enabling a much clearer listen to the vocals and created something deeper and darker than the original. This is very reminiscent of the music created within the Isolationist genre that was to come to fruition in the years following. The pumpkin coloured 12” featured “Slick 66”, a re-titled cover of Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” with his hero Terry Hall (ex-The Specials and Fun Boy Three) on backing vocals. Tricky’s camp pronunciation flow sounds like a precursor to Asher D’s similar style on So Solid’s “They Don’t Know”. As his second hip-hop cover, this is miles away from PE’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”, being a cautionary narrative (a hip-hop fable without animals) about a boy with a gun who takes the ‘wrong path’. As for the Alex Reece remix of "Brand New You're Retro" and the Badja mix of “Pumpkin”, the less said the better; how can junglists create such atrociously lumpy and stubborn rhythms?

Finding a temporary soulmate in Bjork, who was working on her second LP Post, Tricky went on to co-write and co-produce two antithetical tracks for her (and, in return, she contributed two tracks for his Nearly God project). Warming up with a trembling organ line “Enjoy” kicks into an oppressive, but amazing, bassline, while industrial harsh martial percussive beats provide the rhythmic basis and violent stabs and freeform squonks of horn are contributed by Einar (the man responsible for the silly rap on The Sugarcubes “Hit”). The expert hand of Marcus Dravs ensures these sounds slide back and forth in the mix, creating a shifting, urgent sound inspiring relentless head nodding. “Headphones” (a platonic love song to 808 State main man and collaborator, Graham Massey) feels like it’s been let loose from its rhythmic moorings, drifting loose between the speakers. This hardly-formed piece of genius/beauty feels more like an embryo of an ambient track, as transparent little membranes of sound, hums and Matmos style pitter-patter beats (made from finger tapping on mics) give it a lack of easily identifiable structure. Tricky played a pre-Bjork demo of it to Terry Hall, who admitted he was utterly clueless as to what to do with it. Hall’s attempted comeback EP “Rainbows” (lead track co-written with Damon Albarn) included a live deconstruction of the classic Specials song “Ghost Town” recorded at a Tricky show. I expect this new version may have been performed in an attempt to show the song’s remaining relevance, but this truncated version doesn’t relay the grim inner city of the original, contain the manic ‘la, la la la la’ refrain or feature the counterbalance of the happy ‘good old days’ refrain. Whilst the original message remains pertinent to modern day Great Britain (and possibly elsewhere), this is poorly executed and uninteresting, which is possibly why it was never given a studio recording.

The collaborations completed around this period showed an artist prepared to push himself in many different directions; sometimes harshly experimental, simple pop melodies and improvisational work. Expanding his palette of influence, Tricky seemed to be creating unique sounds and pushing the envelope seemingly without concern for boundaries or careerist motivations, yet still enjoying critical and reasonable sales. He was walking (and was helping to create) the fine line between the avant-garde, hip-hop and pop. There is a school of thought, though, that argues that this is the point at which Tricky suddenly fell off. Ignoring the work he did in 1996 and onwards, however, means missing out on some of his finest work, much of it putting Maxinquaye in a comparative shadow.

--- Part Two ---
--- Part Three ---

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

---

ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

--- Part One ---
--- Part Three ---

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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--- Part Three ---

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

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--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

---

ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

---

ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

--- Part One ---
--- Part Three ---

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

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--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

---

ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

--- Part One ---
--- Part Three ---

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

--- Part One ---
--- Part Three ---

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

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--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

---

ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

--- Part One ---
--- Part Three ---

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

--- Part One ---
--- Part Two ---

Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

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Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.

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ineteen Ninety Six



With an unusual list of vocal collaborators: Bjork, Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, Dedi Madden and Cath Coffey, it was obvious Nearly God was going to be a bizarre collection of songs (one rumour had it as a sampleadelic Eighties synthpop throwback). It was such a risky venture that Tricky put it out under a different name, which may have been because, apart from Bjork, all of his collaborators were unproven talent or stars with better yesterdays than todays. In reality, whatever name he chose to put it out under, this was Tricky’s second LP. The sound of the record was much darker than expected after the relative polish of Maxinquaye; it's a dark, zoned out, Class-A substance damaged lo-fi affair which still manages to force melody through dark mesh. Realistically though, this isn’t a dyspeptic, career destroying Metal Machine Music themed 'fuck you'. Because while the songs forms are barely scratched in, never mind being fleshed out; Tricky makes the sound of dark nights, of want and solitude just as engaging as anything on his debut.

The icebreaker of “Tattoo” (a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover) makes music of grinding gears and drones damp with spots of drying blood, tears and sweat-smeared make-up. Stretched backing vocals yearn with an almost visceral sexual tension; these are the sex induced queasy shakes that the press claimed Maxinquaye was offering, which Tricky gives with his breathy vocals, racked with catarrh echoing sighs. Further down this spiral lay “Keep Your Mouth Shut”, a post relationship threat to Bjork made before their relationship had even ended. The mangled loops of found sound and sinister echoing underpass footsteps sit at odds with dreamy wafts of song from her own “You've Been Flirting Again”.

There are moments of light relief; more butterfly vocals from Bjork on "Yoga", the bluesy beats of Neneh Cherry’s “Together Now” and Terry Hall’s dark humour ("Life is just one bloody thing after another”). Their duet on "Bubble" reveals Hall to be the ideal lethargically calm pairing for someone as suspicious and wired as Tricky. Additionally, it’s Hall’s lyrics that form the heart of the fragile triptych of himself, Martina and Tricky on "Poems" which slinks along on submarine radar percussion and Tom Wait’s stolen organ. The metallic clapped hands bongo beat (with shades of “Overcome”) and snipped pealing bell melody of "Sing for You" with its mantra like lyrics: ‘Pray for me...so I can find my way home, leave me now...so I can be alone’ offered Cath Coffey more scope than her day job as a backing vocalist for Stereo MCs. She’s a decent singer, but pales before the might of Martina Topley-Bird who subtly seethes (I imagine at Tricky) over the “Pills and Soap” sampling jazz standard, “Black Coffee”. Martina also took the vocals on Tricky’s second cover of “Children’s Story”, which appeared on the B-side of “Poems”, as well as being featured as an extra track on the US version of this LP. Martina’s decision to sing these traditionally rapped lyrics makes the song resemble a fairy tale as much for its delivery as for its nursery rhyme lyrics.

A last minute falling out with Damon Albarn while mixing their collaboration meant that the track “I’ll Pass Through You” was pulled and remains unreleased and unheard to this day, although Tricky admitted re-recording it using Suggs (Madness) on vocals instead. This addition would’ve substantially increased the profile of the project, not to mention sales. As a result, Tricky still pours forth bilious comments at the mention of Albarn’s name. This is one of the earliest and most high profile fallouts of his career, and the sense of wasted opportunity is one that hangs heavy with the passing of time. It’s obvious that this could have been one of the first major steps outside of Blur’s musical axis that Albarn would have engaged in. Instead, a few years later Albarn would have success with the Gorillaz and Mali Music projects, while Tricky would fall further into irrelevance.

As far as the production goes Nearly God is one of Tricky’s greatest achievements, rising above Maxinquaye in terms of its rough, nasty broken sonics and its pop potential. Lyrically it covers lullabies, sex, humour, threats and some darker insights into the warped world of Tricky revealing him to be much more complex than the confused stoner who is scared of girls on Maxinquaye. But it wasn’t all good in 1996, his Durban Poison remix of Intastella’s (picture a band coming in last in a One Dove wannabes contest) “Grandmaster” took a well whisked custard smooth track and undressed it for the first 2.30 and then spoiled it by covering it back up with some shitty soft house beats. What’s more, Tricky went on to run the decent enough “Milk” by Garbage withering it under the kind of dull and featureless production jobs you normally find on an Annie Lennox or Rod Stewart record. Instead of being too polished this is a claustrophobic, crawling tuneless lament spared only by the mercifully musical piano of the chorus. Tricky took great offence when it was relegated to the b-side, and gave them some stick in interviews, as he thought that the decision had been made for purely commercial reasons forced upon them by their label or management. These sorts of conspiracy theories seem to crop up throughout his career when things didn’t go to plan; it probably would’ve never dawned on him or his growing ego that his mix was inferior to the band’s own remix (which his vocals also appeared on).

Later in the year, his effortless (as in lack of) remix of Yoko Ono’s “Where Do We Go From Here” also suffered from apparent lack of input. Admittedly, it is the most commercial piece on Rising Remixes, sitting alongside mixes by Ween, Thurston Moore and Cibo Matto, but this purely because he removes all of her trademark unexpected shrieks and moans. The only variation, though, in the plodding two bar loop is Tricky mumbling some of her lyrics either over her or in spaces in-between. There really is no comparison between this and, say, the emotional fusion which you can hear between Martina and Tricky.

Citing invasions of privacy and general disgust at the UK music press (the people who brought Tricky the attention and respect he so readily craved), Tricky left with his royalties for the anonymity of New York. His one-off EP release for NY based Payday records Tricky Presents Grassroots is viewed by many as evidence of his blatant desire to be seen as both an MC and a hip-hop producer. That may have been his intention, to escape from the typecast role of rent-a-gob and doom preacher by going back to his musical roots. But by only using MCs on two of the five tracks and by employing self-consciously leftfield production, nothing could be further from the truth. Interestingly, despite the fact that he is merely presenting the material, Tricky takes up more than his fair share of time on the EP. This help to make Grassroots more like an extension of the work on Nearly God than something that would push these new artists into the limelight.

The Hillfiguzes’ “Heaven Youth Hell” could, on first listen, be passed off as some stereotypical hip-hop with its main hook being a sample lifted from the Beastie’s “Hold it Now, Hit it” and typical East Coast confrontational ‘guns and money’ raps from the 2 MCs. But Tricky’s appearance on the intro and outro of the song singing a snatch of Bob Marley’s “Time will Tell” over and over in a gargoyle style voice doesn’t do much to benefit the track at all; in fact it rigidly jars in the way that Diddy and Dupri’s interruptions sometimes do. Laveda Davis’ duet with Tricky, “Devil’s Helper”, glues a slowed down fire bell to a snip of blues vocal which trudges along at a codeine OD pace. It’s only when Tricky hands over the production reins to someone else and acts as a co-producer/mixer that we get something approaching a straightforward piece of R & B music. 98% of “Live w’Yo Self” is a sample of the overly used and very familiar Mad Lads “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” guitar intro, but the Tricky penned lyrics on God, the devil and erections balance the predictable production. The really notable track here is the mightily belligerent “Tricky Kid”, which can also be found on Pre-Millennium Tension with a rejigged and better beat. In fact both versions are startlingly close to a normal hip-hop production. The song deals with Tricky’s new-found fame and how everyone now wants a piece of him now. His flow is straightforward, sticking to verse, chorus and a simple line rhyme structure; so why is Tricky still pretty much ignored by hip-hop?

Sure, Tricky seems comfortable using hip-hop's braggadocio style lyrics in his music, though uses interviews to let off steam about the majority of his many beefs and lay into past allies and contributors. Maybe the choices of darker subject matter and his avoidance of staple subjects of commercial hip-hop are enough to create this distance. But, if we believe this, even the wordier and allegedly less myopic underground scene has never really opened up for him.

The key, though, is that Tricky never really tried to be accepted in the first place. He is too much of a reactionary to ever tie himself down to one genre; his natural reaction to praise is to do the exact opposite on the next release. In as fickle a genre as hip-hop, this approach was and is not looked kindly upon. Thus, Tricky’s unique position during this period was in limbo between the worlds of hip-hop and the avant-garde; between two different realities, the need to express the real life of the inside world and the real life of the outside world. Being real for Tricky seems to mean being aware of and expressing some deep inner confusion and hurt, more than expressing outward street realities. Hip-hop, being a more guarded reluctant musical community, drew away from Tricky while the more avant-garde/art-school rock tradition adopted him as a native son.

The first taste of Pre-Millennium Tension, his second official LP, came with the “Christiansands” single. Tricky’s vocals are pushed higher up in the mix than Martina’s here, but he’s rapping over her on purpose. The song laughingly questions the validity of being a part of a ‘you and me’ unit, and he’s spitting bitterly on the idea of the satisfying, fulfilling relationship with lines like ‘when you talk you make me cringe’. His vocals sound altered to make them more guttural, but there are no effects here; he’s just naturally fucked up his own voice. An ugly grinding bass pulse offsets the kindergarten chorus and the sampled and clipped surf guitar melody, ramming the dark and light together.

Under the pseudonym of The Imposter, Elvis Costello remixed “Christiansands”, stretching it from a healthy four to a dubbed up seven minutes of edited words and music on the precipice of menace. In return Tricky remixed “Distorted Angel”, from All This Useless Beauty, taking Costello’s disturbing imagery and clear strong voice into Nearly God territory with murky and oddly organic sounds shifting from left to right with only a metronomic dulled bell to keep time. The third track here, and winner of the prize for the worst material that Tricky has ever put his name to, is “Flynn” a song consisting entirely of a 2.30 repeated loop of a slowed down sample from Chill Rob E’s “Bad Dreams”; the definition of filler.

The resultant album, though, was nearly perfect. While Maxinquaye may have ushered in the zeitgeist, this is his best LP to date. A naked violet painted female holds a glowing red apocalyptic globe hiding her genitalia, making all the more obvious the homophonic pun of Pre-Menstrual/Pre-Millennium Tension. The inner sleeve shows a male in the same pose with a glowing red dildo also imprinted with recognisable land masses.

The album, as a whole, is harsher than anything he had done before or after and sonically nothing like his debut, using industrial Lynch/Tractor soundscapes and palpitating metallics as moody structures. It’s as if he created an initial verse/chorus melodic demo and then he took these songs and obfuscated them with grime, pulled them apart and spliced them back together and splashed with broken glass. The processed burning beats loop of Martina’s cover of “Bad Dreams” is unrelentingly solid, the pressure building steadily as spiralling guitar feedback swarms around the mix. In contrast the other hip-hop cover which Martina also handles solo, Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”, relies on looser live percussion playing and low bass vibrations to back up her more than capable flow. With this unleashing of energy blatant on the LP, the accompanying tour showed a band eager to display their enthusiasm for the music by pushing it several steps further. Tricky’s live evolution had grown from DJ sets and PAs through to (attempted) live recreations by musicians for hire to the furious transformations that the PMT touring band put together. Songs were extended into improvisational jams with Tricky shaking and screaming couplets lyrics, while the band ploughed through grooves, keeping the songs boiling just below splintering chaos.

Tricky’s often overlooked but definitive classic, Pre-Millennium Tension is all about frustration, hostility, beauty and energy. The album also gives the listener a chance to be impressed with original lyrics, as opposed to those recycled from the past found on Maxinquaye. The other main distinction here is the different approach to the way the voices are used. They no longer seem to mesh; instead jarring and fighting for space on the mic. Out of the eleven tracks, only five of them feature both Martina and Tricky, and only two of these (“Sex Drive” and “Vent”) feature any reasonable interaction. The punishing gloom, breaking glass and metal beats of “Vent” sets the tone for the twisted relationship between Martina and Tricky (the song has too many similarities to their personal circumstances for it to be an invented narrative) and the screaming friction of their life together.

“My Evil Is Strong” and “Bad Things” are where all the mysticism centered around Tricky really started to become a part of his already warped media persona. Both songs are strange tirades about manipulating energy and using it to hurt someone, wishing car crashes and gun suicide upon people. The music is light, seemingly oblivious to the suggested danger of the words. This is an interesting theory which artists like Genesis P-Orridge have worked heavily upon in the past; that focusing energy through visualisation can manifest or focus the mind to make actual events occur. As odd as those songs are, at least they fit into our view of Tricky’s paranoid and mashed world easily enough, “Makes Me Wanna Die” does not. A beautiful but empty song consisting of percussion and lone guitar, it’s worth remembering that the lyrics are Tricky’s, despite being sung by Martina. It’s these a very rare and honest glimpse into his weakness, hurt and loss—a shard of quiet on a LP of noise and force. The only major flaw here is the final track, the Costello sampling "Piano" which ends the LP on a retarded slump with its repetitive sound, building neither atmosphere nor involvement.

After the completion of his second LP of the year, Tricky once again helped Neneh Cherry to record ten or so tracks during the sessions for her Man album. The majority of these remain unheard because reportedly her management felt they were too uncommercial for a comeback. Aside from "Together Now" (actually found on Man) four other tracks appeared as b-sides, scattered across her three singles. The commercial charms of Cherry (I am restraining myself from using the word sassy which seems to be always bandied around her) coupled with Tricky’s raw experimental style and the studio experience of engineer Mark Saunders was a marriage made in heaven, their specialities overlapping into something more fresh than anything Cherry has done since.

“Devotion” follows the tried and true Tricky style of combining washes of sad analogue keys and bony beats, but with the beautiful slightly reverberated descending piano line on the chorus. Cherry drops her sassy style long enough to reveal a yearning to understand the complications of relationships. This theme of intimacy rears its head again and again in her collaborative work, as well as his own. The elements of “I Wanna Know” have been put together to resemble an uplifting basic, cleanly produced garage band tune; the guitar, organ, hand claps are there with an element of bounce to them. "Crackbaby" is the mouldiest of the bunch, sounding like a down tuned chalky version of Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear". There's an aura of plastic menace around the whole song, and even sonic trickery like looped throaty coughs and the cat/baby mewls in the background don’t do much. Best of all is "Had You in Me" with its sad salvation army horns amongst sampled ODB moans, a slowed down Gahan/Gore vocal and a horn part chopped and lifted from the Angel Heart soundtrack. A magnificent example of the worlds of Tricky and Cherry clashing with Saunders as the mediator.

Finally in 1996 for remixes, Tricky worked with Bush on their Deconstructed remix LP. Originally released on the b-side of their MTV faux Cobain epic “Swallowed”, Tricky’s production of Bush’s version of New Order’s Joy Division track “In a Lonely Place” also found it’s way onto The Crow II OST. Having met through Dave Dorrell who was managing Bush at the time, Tricky was only too happy to praise their determination and grounded nature at the time. Of course several years later he reversed this opinion and fickly laid into them as only he can. Sounding fairly similar to the original, the processing on Rossdale’s vocals is pretty awful; whether this is covering up his LA-isms or his Curtis-isms is open to debate.

Having established himself primarily through his furious release schedule at this point, it’s disappointing that the extra material on his promotional singles for his strongest LP was mostly previously released. The “Tricky Kid” singles culled two of the five tracks from Grassroots EP and “Smoking Beagles” had been released several months earlier on 12” by Sub Sub, who wrote and performed its music (and then went on to become Doves). Tricky growls and threatens that he’s “fucking Ronald Regan, cos I’m pagan” in the middle of half cut battle rhymes over an echoing, layered fifties space rock which sounds sue-ably similar to “The Pink Room” theme from Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me. His own “Makes Me Wanna Die - Extremix” is abysmal, a deadpan recitation of the lyrics as if disassociating himself from the words over another achingly dull loop. All was not lost though, as there is a version of “Suffocated Love” recorded live on UK music showcase “Later with Jools Holland” (already featured on one of his compilation LPs). Backed with the same instrumentation as the LP version, this performance is lighter and spacier and even swings a little due to the excellent strummed guitar work.

1997

An inexplicably quiet year for Tricky, in which his remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” was released to incomprehensibility from fans of both artists. The anticipation and speculation over what magic Tricky could work with a Biggie accapella was maddeningly much more interesting than the actual final product. While the possibilities are endless, Tricky laid a tired robotic beat under a lazy treble-free mix of car screeches and heating ducts warming up. A huge wasted opportunity.

Tricky produced and duetted on the Grease favourite “Summer Nights” with Cath Coffey on her solo LP, Mind the Gap. Unsurprisingly it sounds absolutely nothing at all like the original and is only barely recognisable by the lyrics. It seems to have been done fairly straight as well, no ironic posturing or sniggering going on.

Stereo MCs took a little break from their five year holiday after finishing Connected to remix “Makes Me Wanna Die” for it’s single release. Retaining Martina’s vocals, the remix lightened the mood considerably, placing it within a typical but entertaining production of flute, trumpet and guitar wed to their trademark accomplished groove. The “Acoustic Version” mixed by Tricky, is sadly not an acoustic version. There is an acoustic guitar, but the piece is dominated by an unchanging Middle Eastern drone and crackled beats. To its detriment, this mix turns up the dark but switches off the melancholy. The rest of the tracks here make this an altogether disappointing collection in support of a great A-side. A Guy called Gerald tackled “Piano” with his “Green Stinky Mix” and while it’s an improvement on the original and injects some animation into the beats (unlike the Pumpkin 12” remixes), it’s melodically barren, as heavy breaks are chopped into chunks across the track effectively bring to a halt any semblance of a flow. A brief collaboration with Afrika Izlam gave birth to the bouncy but boring persecutory “Here Come the Aliens” employing foghorns and sped up strings for a melody. Both this release and the “Tricky Kid” single were the first releases which felt rushed and substandard; it’s easy to imagine Tricky scrabbling for anything to fill up this two CD single release regardless of quality.

1998

Tricky released three independently financed white label 12”s early this year before getting down to the serious business of promoting and touring his new LP Angels With Dirty Faces. The first of these, “Divine Comedy”, is one of the most virulent anti-record company tracks ever recorded; slamming both Polygram and its subsidiary, Island Records, in retaliation for racist comments made by an executive. Using a backing track which rose and fell around the enraged attack and pregnant lulls of flailing guitars, PE horn screams, bleeps and frantic drumming, Tricky launched a six minute stream of consciousness rant against his bosses. Amidst this vengeful clatter he calls out Polygram as racists, gunrunners and ‘fucking niggers’, making it quite clear that he’s not afraid to get dropped by Island. Many recording artists bitch about their labels in interviews; few go as far as naming names and paying to release their attacks on vinyl. The second 12” was “Can’t Freestyle”, as aimless as “Divine Comedy” was direct. It consists of scratchy violin and breathing apparatus beats with Tricky whispering about, amongst other nonsense, the peculiar rumours that Finley Quaye may or may not have started about Tricky being his Uncle. The third was the sneaky release of “Cradle to the Grave” which he’d recorded with Grace Jones and was supposed to have come out on his own Durban Poison label. But as had been the form in the past, they fell out and the songs were put away until one of the two artists grew up. Luckily, this primitive spastic beat pandemonium managed to slip out.

The proper LP, Angels with Dirty Faces, is Tricky’s oddest collections of songs because (with a few exceptions) they are some of his most commercial sounding, clearest and sharpest productions. Even with such obvious melodies it still got rammed critically and sank commercially, ironic as his whiny lyrics about critics and the music business make this a thoroughly unappealing listen.

Where in the past he had drawn lyrical inspiration from his fears and insecurities, adding hip-hop slang to his meanderings through his own subconscious, here his obsession with the critics and record companies spilled over into the studio. The lyrics began to really grate, coming from someone who readily admits that he got everything he asked for and was treated with kid gloves by his label. The lyrics here don’t depict a man at war with a flawed and corrupt industry; it’s a baby flinging his expensive toys out of his pram. Without this lyrical aspect AWDF could’ve been a strong modern blues release solidifying his reputation as an artist of worth with something to offer fans and casual listeners.

Musically, some tracks slip easily into this Blues mould; the picked riff on the sleeping pill funk of “Mellow” slowed and stretched to a foggy crawl and the preceding New Orleans funeral swing of “Broken Homes”. Stereotypically, modern blues releases are associated with guitar solos by men called King and lots of ‘My Baby/Honey’ lyrics (“Mellow” nearly overdoses on these) lamenting some hardship. What Tricky regards and discusses here as personal injustices merely come over without any real depth of pain or emotion. “Demise”, whilst musically outstanding, is hampered by the vocal performances of Martina and Tricky and the requisite jabs at the industry. Martina’s solo performance “Singin’ the Blues” (an ancient jazz standard) sounds as though her vocals had been lifted straight from a gramophone source dumping them over one of his funkiest morphing breaks, twists of didgeridoo and a constant circular stammering guitar.

Much of this music is torn down to the essentials of melody and rhythm, down to the bone in some places. But this is more obviously harmonious and enjoyable where Nearly God was defiantly low rent and obtuse. Using one of Prince’s ex-engineers Susan Rogers seems to have enabled the work to be more focused and clear without pandering to whatever was hot at the time. The sound is refined in places to amazingly beautiful simplicity, but also showcases that the discerning ear for the line between lo-fi experimentation (“Carriage for Two”) and plain old boring (“Talk to Me”) that was starting to slip. A good example of this is shown on the b-sides to the lead double a-side singles “Money Greedy” and “Broken Homes”. The petulant mess of a song like “Anti-Histamine” is redeemed only by having Martina directly lift Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” chorus to drag it from utter irrelevance. Managing to serve both as a warning to the ladies not to cheat on him and a dig at the press interest in Pre-Millennium Tension’s title (‘I keep tellin' em, don't give a fuck about millennium’) he seems at times unable (or unaware of the need sometimes) to push beyond a bare noisy loop.

The so called hip-hop mix of “Broken Homes” is a little more strident than the original, but offers little new besides Martina’s vocal effected to sound as though she is singing them through a rolled up newspaper standing at the other end of the studio from the drum machine. Such easily ignored material was thrown into further relief when compared to Martina cooing and mmming in the background on “360°”. Plink-plonk percussion and a horn section straight out of Raindogs back a self-improvement mantra with the duo intoning ‘I'm on my knees, Three-sixty degrees, Make a better man’. “Time” (or “Time Slippin’” depending on where you live) allegedly showcased Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Wendy and Lisa, though there is barely enough going on here amidst the clashing rhythms to keep the man who presses play-and-record busy, never mind a host of collaborators. Again the Waits’ influence on this piece is screamingly obvious, possibly due to the fact that he had hired some of Waits’ band for these sessions.

“Money Greedy” recycles the music from “Divine Comedy”, but the vocal delivery is a little more lacklustre making it nowhere near as violent or unhinged, this time berating those who put money over art. He later claimed it was all about Massive Attack, which seems to be patently ridiculous. Either Tricky has spent his whole career being wronged and ripped off by nearly everyone he’s worked with or the paranoia that was believed to be a side effect of his huge spliff intake is a much, much more deep rooted problem.

The live shows for this tour were even more intense and strung out than those around P-MT, with most of the tracks going off on extended explosive jams. In comparison, the album is a totally different animal; tamer and cleaner, swaying between leftfield R & B and attempts at punk. The band would lock into grooves, spacing off into harder riffs while Tricky bashed out loops and drones from his keyboard. Instead of sticking to the lyrical script he would introduce mini-mantras—screaming out snatches of lyrics; all of this succeeded in building tension and unleashing it in waves. Played live "Tear Out my Eyes" (or “You” as the live version was better known) was an aggressively raw hurricane of energy, the band starting off the song at a breakneck pace already on the verge of splintering apart. “Record Companies” the track that rounds off Angels with Dirty Faces, is an extended 33rpm dirge of lavatorial proportions, ending the LP on a low note just as “Piano” did on P-MT. Live it was titled “I Don’t Make Records, I Sell Guns” (again referencing Polygram’s reputed links with arms trade) and avoided the Biggie and 2Pac clichés of the original by jumping from thought to thought

This preoccupation with hip-hop again rears its head with the nearly normal attempt on “Six Minutes”. The promise that his attempts at incorporating elements of hip-hop into his sonic world, however intentional, offered up the hope that there was still life beyond the myopic US stranglehold on hip-hop, and the UK's insistence in replicating it as closely as possible. Groups like Gunshot and London Posse had played a large part in introducing credible UK regional (London, in these cases) accents and ragga elements into hip-hop but still the UK clung to the American sonic template and the 'a man, his dick and his money' dominated lyrics. But as mentioned before, Tricky doesn't really rap and his productions have more in common with Harry Partch than DJ Premier. And, on his Notorious BIG remix and this year’s remix of Cam’ron’s “Horse and Carriage” there is little to suggest that Tricky was courting these audiences anyway.

Angels with Dirty Faces was the last instance where Tricky worked with Martina as the band known as Tricky, a decision based probably as much on their personal relationship’s deterioration as it was with his belligerence towards certain sections of the UK press. In particular he cited two interviews which he had given to UK style magazine The Face as reasons for his decision "When I read that Face thing, I started thinking we should split up...when we do split up and there's more press I'm going to blame Andrew and Craig {Face article authors}, those two people are directly to blame." ^

Finally, Tricky was approached, being a fairly high profile poster boy for stoners, to contribute to the soundtrack of Half Baked. The five tracks he produced each have different reasons why they’re worthy of being shunted into a dark cupboard and left there for good. They range from the very boring (Cibo Matto) to the unnecessary (Black Grape) to the ignorable (Nonchalant) and as for his production job on UB40’s “I Get Lifted”, I doubt very much whether Tricky actually had anything to do with this at all as it’s not even acknowledged on their official discography.

1998. The year when the rollercoaster dipped over the edge of the quality peak? Most likely. Tricky’s lyrics were now beginning to lack any central threads, slipping off into random and unwieldy phrases in order to rhyme and much of his music for other artists was beginning to look like 30 minutes work at a sequencer, if he managed not to fall out with them before release, that is. From here, sadly, it’s mostly downhill.

^ Big Issue Magazine May 1998

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ineteen Ninety Nine

Tricky’s work with mainstream hip-hop hadn’t really yielded anything that had worked yet, but his remix of Method Man’s “Judgement Day”, the lead single from Tical 2000 showed that in collaboration his work could be adapted to this genre. Credited to Tricky alone, it featured touring guitarist, Mark Thwaite (The Mission/New Disease) playing live on the mix. It’s this element that makes it work; the rickety bassline, the loose rhythm guitar and the Indian melody line hacked from some longer guitar noodling all serve to support Meth with an up-tempo rhythm. It’s not going to incite (or excite) your average Murder Inc fan into checking out Tricky though. This was the last of the Tricky remixes/productions which were actually of any worth, with a few more collaborative exceptions. Revolving predominantly around brief repetitive loops, there is precious little going on in his mix work from 99 onwards (check Aco’s “Natsu No Hi” for proof if you have four minutes to kill).

Tricky had been working on and heavily promoting the debut LP of his Stonepony project, in which he and Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs would be sharing vocals and production without any input from any other vocalists (i.e. Martina). Much to the surprise of those awaiting the LP, including Muggs, he dumped the project at the eleventh hour, instead releasing the 35 minute Juxtapose featuring 5 ex-Stonepony songs, 1 solo effort and 4 collaborations with Dame Grease, crediting the LP to Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease. No explanations were given.

Lead single “For Real” was a decent enough song, taking swipes at gangsta rap (even though it’s produced by DMX and Yukmouth producer, Grease) and for some unknown reason reminds me, musically, of something Seal would release (that’s not meant as an insult). It’s unexpectedly mature and melodic, incorporating live instrumentation like Sitars and breathy non-Martina female vocals. Normally I can take or leave Grease’s sub Swizz beats impressions but this is a really interesting sound from him. But it was the Muggs material I had been looking forward to hearing, so as an introduction this initially boded well for the rest of the LP. The b-sides weren’t so hot though. “Bombing Bastards” starts off like some dark cellar hip-hop and then rolls along with Tricky freestyling lines from his old material. Christ, my patience at this time was wearing thin; it became infuriating as he seemed to be putting less work into the words/music and yet still acted annoyed when his label began to withdraw support as Island began to undergo takeover restructures. The old classic “Pop Muzik” uses the slightly altered backing of LP track “Scrappy Love” and adds some quirky noises in an attempt to disguise the source material.

The Grease Tracks

“Bom Bom Diggy” has a crap title, a crap chorus and weedy music. Despite this, this track still stands out for one reason; Maddog. Previously known as Bionic of UK Hip-hop/jungle pioneers, the London Posse, he’d spent the last few years spitting with Junglist crews before Tricky ran into him. Maddog goes 100mph over the beat, disregarding it totally and demanding you hit the rewind to try and catch all that he says. Tricky is left to wallow in his own whispering. This shows how far Tricky really is from being regarded as a real MC; in fact this is the first time he’s been put next to a proper UK MC, and he comes off really badly.

“I Like the Girls” is, as you might expect, a sex rap. Tricky sticks to the materialistic chorus while Maddog immerses himself in clits, bitches, cream and lesbians; y’know, the typical teen fantasy bullshit. Not particularly good at all.

The backing for “Hot Like a Sauna” could’ve been a DMX track, it bounces along on pounding squelches and keyboard beats but still can’t keep up with Maddog. Tricky comes out with some amusing lines and a little gangsta chic in his verse, but is soon forgotten as Maddog (think a deeper voiced Dizzee) takes the rest of the verses at incredible pace. Invigorating, hardcore stuff. A “metal mix” version of this track turns up later on the LP; it’s exactly the same except the squelches are replaced by keyboard-played guitars. Pretty pointless.

The other Muggs tracks

“Contradictive”. Songs like this are the reason why it’s been so difficult for me to ditch the Tricky habit; this is genius. An Indian melody played on Spanish melody, light bongo beats with live bass add a smoky air to the dissipating, twisting layering chorus vocals.

“Call Me” features rubbish singer D’NA droning on about ’I wait for you, I hate for you’ over prominent snares. Most interesting are the punches of messy guitar which leak onto the track. Seems there was another lyrical dry run as he borrows again from Nenehs Cherry’s “Had you in Me”. Her impression of passionate singing at the end is pitifully bad; I’m assuming she was incredibly attractive, made great cups of tea or her dad owned the studio.

The lone acoustic guitar intro of “Wash My Soul” has a lonely spiritual air which is destroyed by what appear to be Lil Kim lyrics - ‘Lick it, wet it, you like it, you let it, Lick it, wet it, touch it, take your turn’.

“Scrappy Love” is probably the crappest song ever to be appear on a greatest hits collection (as this did on 2002), clinging onto life through the piano line from “Games without Frontiers”. Tricky, mumbling some reflective crap about lost love, adds the word ‘love’ at the end of almost every line. Unbearable.

The Tricky Track

“She Said” rolls along strongly enough as bongo playing skirts the main rhythm. Yet another track which uses the LPs signature sound; the quick static blasts of displaced guitar. A surprising amount of repetition of the phrase ‘She Said’ amongst a lot of very shit lyrics.

The celluloid skid mark that was the movie Forces of Nature featured an exclusive Tricky song on the OST and therefore I was compelled to buy it. He may have not been using Martina and her vocals anymore but he found someone to try and fill her boots on “Slowly”. Carmen Ejogo (she is the love interest in flop Eddie Murphy vehicle Metro) does Martina by numbers and gets away with it on the sheer strength of the breezy, relaxed warm piano production. This is a hidden gem amongst the Tricky treasure trove of rarities.

2000

The Mission Accomplished EP was the first completely dire release of Tricky’s career, serving as both his debut release new label Anti (the non punk wing of Epitaph and home to, guess who, Tom Waits) and was to meant to serve as both a ‘hello’ to Anti and a ‘fuck you’ to Island. The title track was based on a fuzzed-up rough riff of the Mission Impossible theme, featuring Chesney Hawkes (yes, that Chesney Hawkes) on vocals with Tricky. It’s really a drudge to listen to with its thinly recorded drums, really annoying pinging guitar lick and an air of people who believe they are producing something really heavy when it really sounds like a bad Cher rocker.

Both “Crazy Claws” and “Tricky Vs Lynx (live)” (it’s not live, there’s no lynx and Tricky isn’t on it) suffer from decent vocalists either being lyrically tiresome, like Marlon and Maddog, or else descending into some mumbled, half-whispered, repetition-based freestyle rap like Tricky does here, especially on “Crazy Claws”. The music is fairly innocuous mashing live rhythm instruments with programmed beats and shifting electronic drones. The final track is the official release of 1998’s Polygram diss "Divine Comedy", Tricky giving his old paymasters the finger once again from the safety of another label.

2001

"I did Blowback for the cash" **. Tricky made official in May 2003 what most listeners had already guessed in June 2001, when he released his first album for Anti. Not that this in itself is a reason to dismiss it, but when you add that powdered shit flakes admission to an already unappetising dish, the damage is irrevocably done. Seemingly slapped together from tracks from both new studio sessions and unreleased recordings that went as far back as two years, it unfortunately more than delivered on the lack of promise that the Mission Impossible EP offered. With a list of contributors that read like a who's who of overrated US alt rockers backed by a bunch of Tricky’s new pretend best friends, Blowback stinks of desperation. Acts like Live and Alanis Morrisette were still big names with devoted fans but both had run aground creatively, pumping out the same old material to increasing indifference. Citing management issues Alanis had one of her pityingly rank collaborations, “Question”, pulled from the finished LP, appearing only on promos. Tricky repaid Live's Ed Kowalczyk by dropping a few rough voiced and uninspiring lines in the middle of their ‘gotta love one another’ anthem “Simple Creed” from their V LP.

Whilst plugging this release he simultaneously slammed his previous LPs as demos and claimed that he had finally found his feet. It’s quite common for artists to push their current vision (he himself identified this era’s vision as cash focused) at the expense of everything else they’ve done, but he was fooling no one; Tricky was finally playing the same game as the rest of the pack. Calling this his ‘radio album’ shows that he was totally out of step with what was actually going on.

In his defence, I’ll give him a smidgeon of credit for keeping his options open on Blowback with a mild selection of styles being covered, albeit very poorly, instead of going straight for MOR. It’s not the diversity of the material that leaves the LP feeling so casual; it’s the quality of theses toe-in-the-water genre impersonations. Most of the work here seems to have borrowed and diluted much of it’s style and sound from some of Nine Inch Nail's less abrasive material; electronics meshing with live instrumentation. But where Reznor and his mates create highs and lows through punchy pop hooks, near atonal slabs of static and an air of universal ‘she hurt me and now I’m so very angry’ teenage rage, this lacks any real attempt at emotional or sonic weight.

Again and again the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind to describe his post Juxtapose work is ‘dull as a bastard’. Considering the effects of the lively cross pollination of hip-hop and rock on our youth jumping around in bedrooms and clubs, it’s dismaying that the material here that attempts it is so lacklustre. When "Bury the Evidence" was first unveiled at the live shows on the Angels with Dirty Faces tour it was raw like an open wound, alternating between stripped moodiness and steroid madness. Here it slouches, laughably drained of fury with a spotless guitar sound courtesy of producer Rob Cavallo (of Green Day, Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls fame) who co-produces this and two other tracks.

I don’t think it’s possible to add a more damning indictment of the quality of the song writing on Blowback than to say the finest moment is a version of the “Wonder Woman“ theme, done in collaboration with Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Out of the 12 originals and 3 covers it’s the only one to sound really alive with its soaring Frusciante chorus. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) was also brought in on "Girls" which clomps along like a lead weighted diver, with Tricky shouting like a loon in an attempt to be a rock vocalist. A wasted opportunity when you imagine the flavours that players like Frusciante and Flea could invest in a track, even working within the limited colours of verse chorus solo verse chorus. Add to this equation Tricky’s unpredictability of influence and it could've created much more magic, insane, funky or beautiful music. At the time though he was full of praise at their work, but later they ended up getting dissed by him, saying “they're just like little girls, man."##. You can’t even tell that it’s Cyndi Lauper singing on "Five days" because her vocals are placed so low in the mix. What a waste of a great voice!

There are too few flashes of brilliance to regard this even as an LP which fails only in it’s presentation or production; the dramatic piano line in the otherwise plodding opener "Excess". The talented Ambersunshower gets a sweet lullaby duet with Tricky on the retitled "Your name", a cover of a Judy Garland’s standard “Under The Bamboo Tree”, but she is then flattened by the befuddled demo feel and clichéd lyrics of “Over Me”. Her stilted vocals on the single "You Don't Wanna" revolve around an all too obvious Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams”) sample. The fantastic "A song for Yukiko" sounds like the missing third part of the two bonus songs fromAngels with Dirty Faces, as it was premiered in September 99 on the short-lived Tricky internet radio show. This ghostly, dislocated mood piece would’ve been ideal on the end of that LP, instead it’s tacked onto the end of Blowback, totally out of place. Sadly, this lyricist reuses lines from “Slowly” here, always leaving again that horrible lazy taste when listening to these two songs.

Hawkman is not a talented ragga MC or singer and we can probably surmise that Tricky also came to this conclusion considering that since this LP they haven’t worked together again. The mind boggles over the reasons why the cover of Nirvana’s "Something in the way" ended up the way it did. It's hysterically fucking crap, Hawkman comes off like Eddie Vedder after extensive dental surgery or having singing over a backing that sounds like a cross between a crap version of The Cure circa The Top and one of those cheap keyboard demos songs designed to show off their extensive range of cymbal sounds.

The European bonus disc featured some new songs, two of which were Tricky executive productions, which probably means he didn’t do much in the studio except pay the bill. Both of these were average, “My Head” which featured future collaborator Constanza Francavilla and her irritating voice and “Unofficial”, an average piece of hip-hop with MC Phatt Black. “Suffocating (demo)”, like “Song for Yukiko”, sounds more in tune with the music of his recent past coating live and digital beats with frayed noise guitar.

His workrate over the last two years had ground to a virtual trickle and this may well have been his attempt to get back onto the mainstream’s radar (and into their good books) for doing more than playing his part in assaulting people physically and verbally, but his interviews showed that he was still acting the confused poet thug. Except it was no longer the endearing actions of a unstable genius; it was the ravings of a bitter man cut loose from his art. He seemed to be using his harsh Bristol roots as an excuse for a mindset that demanded respect and sees violence as a potential answer to that lack of respect.

** Burn it Blue May 03

## Burn it Blue June 03

2002

The contrast between the wretched Blowback and Island’s A Ruff Guide best of collection couldn’t have been sharper. Serving as an introduction to his early work it focused mainly on the singles with a few randomly inserted LP tracks. While it would be unfair to compare these two releases, it’s obvious that there was a steep decline in quality control as soon as Tricky was dropped from Island.

A few months later Tricky released the second single from Blowback, the derivative “You Don’t Wanna” throwing up the question of how someone so original in his outlook and focus got around to releasing a single which was little more than a sample and a wasted use of a great vocalist like Ambersunshower. It rightly bombed, taking with it the overzealous and annoying gangsterisms of “Intro Outro” which boasts the last sighting of Hawkman. The third track, “What’s it Gonna be”, is performed by Ko-La, a poppy sounding girl group with a criminally unnecessary name produced by members of his touring band and executive produced by Tricky. This could be any of a million middling girl singers and it’s unlikely anyone would need repeated listens to appreciate everything that this track had to offer. Considering he appeared on Paul Oakenfold’s debut LP Bunkka, duetting with Nelly Furtado on the “The Harder They Come” single, his profile still seemed to slide further into the dark. A rushed split EP with Rico (a mini UK NiN), entitled Mixed-Up Faces, also sank without trace despite much hype, due to it’s lack of substance.

2003

There was some initial confusion as to whether Vulnerable was a return to form of sorts. My first impression was of a technically clearer and less emotionally burdened work; two more listens minus the rose-cushioned headphones proved that this was shaping up to make Blowback look like Rubber Soul in comparison. The press were fed, and in turn regurgitated, the party line that this was his most mature and personal LP to date; a statement revealing much desperation, and in reality saying that here is another collection of songs not good enough to call a comeback, and a desperate attempt to make you give a shit about hearing it.

Vulnerable makes me feel like I’m lying in the damp spot of someone else’s premature shortcomings while they snore away contentedly, oblivious to my dissatisfaction and discomfort. The only relationship I expect to have with an artist is that I’m happy to support them and their life of leisure/pursuit of art as long as I’m interested, involved or fee like jigging about. There is a palpable sense of disappointment in coming to terms with the fact that I seem to be reaching a point where his releases are leaving me unmoved in every sense. Not that he’d give two shakes of an old man’s cock either way.

As a whole, it’s certainly sonically lighter than a lot of previous work, the live sounding electric and acoustic guitars making it slightly more accessible to those not used to hearing the squonks, drones and buzzing fridge effects of usual Tricky productions. Someone would be hard pressed to tell instrumental versions of many of these tracks from any old Max Martin filler track (Backstreet b-sides, early Britney album tracks) as they’re almost flimsily throwaway creations; dull, flat and lifeless. I only wish I knew enough synonyms for the word ‘average’ to be able to adequately cover Vulnerable track by track.

The production is cleaner and the beats are actual drum sounds as opposed to found-sounds, but this sounds like music bleached of its individuality and character. It’s not that if it isn’t dark, moody or foreboding, I won’t like it; I’m all for musical evolution, just not one that strips the magic. It seems Tricky’s come round in a kind of ruinous full circle; in the past it was his production methods and the interplay between the male and female vocals that distinguished him from the everyday trip-hop and pop. Now without the glitches, the irregular, different rhythms and the experimentation it could very easily be any average pop act with some crusty-mouthed geezer doing a Wyclef-type irritating doubling up the vocals of the girl down the street’s vocals on every track.

To return to the Max Martin on a bad day analogy, at least his weak melodies normally have an artist’s image and their pleasant vocal topping to lift it beyond the sum of its parts. Unfortunately Tricky doesn’t have (m)any screaming fans blinded by hormones to fill in the blanks with emotional import. The lead single “Antimatter” being a prime example of this cheap sounding production style stretched over 3 minutes creating something a layered but monotonous track. The accompanying remixes by his touring band and mates were uniformly poor; There are moments of pure horror all over the LP with the cluttered mess of tracks “Wait for God” and “Ice Pick” or the bad metal-lite rhythm guitars on “How High”, “Moody” or the disengaging insipidity of “What is Wrong” and “Stay”.

The situation is not helped by using a very average milk-and-water vocalist like Constanza Francavilla who seems to be under the impression that by sounding girly and breathless the listener will ignore her habit of never reaching notes. Even covering an obvious classic like XTC’s “Dear god” turns into a dud move, as the excellent lyrics are faded out into incomprehensibility by the clash of Constanza’s Italian accent with Tricky’s cracked voice. The “Lovecats” cover is just so pointlessly sapless, unsexy and lacking in any of the elements of cuteness or poptasticism of the original that I seriously wonder what the intention of this cover was. Only the winsome “Hollow”, shining out like a peanut in a turd from the blankfaced clutter of Vulnerable, is worthy of any sort of praise as it’s genuinely subtle flutters of electronics sit alongside the operatic vocal choir. Standing out like sore thumbs are two rawer, darker, more discordant tracks (tagged onto a bonus DVD disc with shitty gangsta flecked videos because of their incompatibility with Vulnerable’s production) done in collaboration with his latest Jamaican ragga mate, Radagon. “Receive Us” and “Snap Them” are a nasty sounding pair, enveloped in threat. “Snap Them” seems to be taking a pop at the latest crop of big names (Nelly, Aguilera, Eminem) and how it’s all about MTV and money; a valid point, but if you have to strain to make out what on earth they are about, what’s the point? So while Vulnerable is mostly fairly subdued and apparently very personal to him, Tricky can’t help but flex those ugly Bristol ghetto muscles. I am guessing that with Radagon being a hell of a lot more difficult to understand, this will probably make him a bit more 4 real than the reasonably coherent Hawkman. Tricky’s claims that a collaborative LP Backactiv was completed around this time and is awaiting release, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt when considering the fate of the LPs recorded with Maddog and Hawkman. With hip-hop now being such a huge part of youth culture and the once impenetrable Ebonics becoming part of everyday speech, the rougher end of ragga now remains urban music’s last uncharted territory, unfathomable even to some of those enjoying like Sean Paul. Did the commercial envelopment of hip-hop’s commercial push intransigent Tricky again to the margins

The tuneless “Search, Search, Survive” ends the LP on a depressing note as he uses it to take a further swing at (totally innocent of anything at all) the Face writers as the track is ” a song for the guy from the Face magazine. He’s the guy who put me through all this…I was the press baby in England, then all of a sudden, even if I put a piece of gold down on a CD, they would still say it’s shit. It’s me basically saying ‘fuck him’.” +

This insanely juvenile and bitter grudge seems to be an obsession of his, living on in Tricky’s mind, work and interviews. Reading these interviews it’s difficult to see exactly what his problem with these interviews actually was. This type of petty fallout has littered his career to his massive detriment. His inability to control every situation involved in working with other musicians and his unwillingness to accept different perceptions.

Martina finally released her debut LP, Quixotic, in mid 03, working with her own production team, Amp 9, and David Holmes as well as Tricky who helped out on five of the thirteen tracks (though his input was limited to unnoticeable additional production duties on three of these). Both “Ragga” and “Ilya” are rhythmically similar to early Tricky/Martina work but the old magic just isn’t there anymore. She works a lot better within tighter, poppier song structures with the rockier sound, and these two are a little too loose; the vocals on “Ilya” sound a little too similar to the slurring patterns of the Maxinquaye era. Compared to the rest of the LP these are average tracks, and it’s the Holmes productions that steal the show, just like the material they worked on for his solo LPs. So with Martina proving she is capable of shining by herself, where can Tricky really go from here?

Its undeniable his sales have taken an almighty battering and critically he’s regarded as having run off the rails into a bland middle ground between pop, rnb, hip-hop and plain weird material. Every now and then he seems to manage to force out something that makes me wonder where he pulled that from, but it now looks like a momentous struggle. The rest of the material sounds pale in comparison, could he really have burnt himself out? Is it possible to actually do that? His sitting pretty position of the man between genres has left him high and dry without a dedicated fan base to fall back on. For me, it’s no longer worth searching out rare tracks and collaborations, because the majority of his music is so unrewarding. The bitterness and hostility he exudes towards the past and the future is going to keep him from getting back to basics and building something new and interesting; didn’t you know he influenced all this music around you now? He’s sitting in a dead end, too stubborn to look for a reverse.

+May 03 studentuk.com

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Thanks to Kitty at Moon Palace for access to her interview archives.