The Friday Canon: TRIP-HOP BATTLE

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

It's Bristol! It's the Nineties! What are the kidz listening to on their 'walk-mans' on the back seat of the bus? Well, East 17 probably, but who was the real winner of the Wess Cunnry Coffee Table war? You have EIGHT ticks to dish out between Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky's UK Top 40 hits.

[Poll #1119484]
Manic Street Preachers: (link)
1. Motorcycle Emptiness
2. You Love Us
=3. Faster / PCP
=3. Little Baby Nothing
5. A Design For Life
=6. Everything Must Go
=6. La Tristesse Durera
8. From Despair To Where
9. Kevin Carter
=10. Revol
=10. Roses In The Hospital
=10. Theme From M.A.S.H. (Suicide Is Painless)

NB: This canon was meant to be put up in December, but I forgot. Look out for all-new Friday poll action next week!

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Someone explain Tricky to me. I only know the stuff he did with Massive Attack.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Appeal of Tricky = largely Martina (girlfriend, singer and muse, picked up as an 18-year-old public school girl skiving school). Her voice was amazing, so laconic and botherd. His own lazy drawl isn't unappealing either, and he always had a knack for a memorable line - I didn't tick it because 'Glory Box' uses the sample better but 'Hell Is Round The Corner' is a great example of this, the rhymes just flow so naturally, "juice me, seduce me, dress me up in Stussy" plus that amazing "we're hungry, beware of our appetite/distant drums bring the news of a kill tonight" couplet. Also 'Tricky Kid' which, until 'Piece Of Me', was the most paranoid fame song I'd heard: "Haile Selassie I! They look after I!"

Maxinquaye is a really varied album: you have swooning bliss on 'Overcome', paranoid soul on 'You Don't', rock on 'Black Steel', amazing looped beats on 'Ponderosa'...you could probably put together a magnificent album out of his best post-Maxinquaye tracks too, though the albums are all a slog. Search esp 'Broken Homes' with PJ Harvey and 'Excess' with, of all people, Alanis Morissette.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Which Tricky stuff was Alison Goldfrapp on?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

'Pumpkin'.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

Slog is a good way of describing it! I think the thing about his post-Maxinquaye work is that too much of it is self-consciously "difficult" - the kind of music that one might, as a po-faced teenager, think earnt one gratias by being able to sit through it without using the skip button. I don't think that was quite his intention, but it does come across like it's meant to be... improving...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It just seems misanthropic to me, kind of like Tricky hated the world and wanted to get back at it by making it sit through BAD MUSIC, scattering a few gems here and there just to be difficult.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's a combination of that, plus I seem to remember certain tracks start getting very very very long, one-note and repetitive, which I think is due to his intended audience being people who were smoking as much weed as he was.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

was ANYONE smoking as much weed as he was????

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

I remember him literally BEGGING people outside the venue for weed when he opened for PJ Harvey.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I think Pre-Millennium Tension is quite light and, dare I say it, fun to listen to. It all got a bit much after that one, though, yeah.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

There's some very, well, sexy stuff on that record, but it's still pretty hard to listen to all the way through...

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

my favourite post-maxinquaye Tricky track: 'Bombing Bastards' (w. Terravnova)

"fuckin Ronnie Reagan, just cos I'm pagan"

[zenith.livejournal.com]

Yeah! That one is great! I got that album as a promo when a student journalist, and everything else on it is kind of blah, but it's awesome - partly cos it samples that Bomb The Bass tune aka the Xenon II music aka the Assault on Precinct 13 theme...

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

yes altho i never realised this until i heard the original John Carpenter composition a few years later gaaah (i knew Megablast tho, just didn't make the link)