THE ELECTRIC BIBLE | CHAPTER 451

THE ELECTRIC BIBLE | CHAPTER 451

MAXINQUAYE

TRICKY

(1994)

A1: OVERCOME (4:30); A2: PONDEROSA (3:30); A3: BLACK STEEL (5:40); A4: HELL IS ROUND THE CORNER (3:47); A5: PUMPKIN (4:30); A6: AFTERMATH (7:38).

B1: ABBAON FAT TRACKS (4:26); B2: BRAND NEW YOU’RE RETRO (2:54); B3: SUFFOCATED LOVE (4:53); B4: YOU DON’T (4:39); B5: STRUGGLIN’ (6:38); B6: FEED ME (4:03).

CATEGORY: EXPERIMENTAL POP | DURATION: 58 MINUTES

By 1994 the meagre future of hip-hip and its derivatives was no longer in the hands of rappers, but of others who sought to deconstruct it – in the US, DJ Shadow whose 1993 release “In/Flux” was the first to be described in the music press as “trip-hop”, and in the UK, Tricky who utilized a female vocalist to sing, torch-style, over a fractured mutation of hip-hop’s electronic foundations. Tape effects, samples and ghostly noise add to the vaguely hallucinatory ambience of Tricky’s first album, Maxinquaye, a lengthy sojourn into the mysteries of the soul that signals the imminent culmination of British pop innovation. The formula was soon repeated by others, quickly becoming mainstream and reaching maximal visibility on Homogenic, a 1997 album by the somewhat skew-feted Icelandic singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir.

 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT YOUNG (1964-2014)

ÆTERNUM VORTICE LACRIMARUM SOMNIAT”