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

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

This was hard to narrow down to 8 ticks. Even though I've never felt really passionate about any of these acts. They inspire respect rather than love I think.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

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

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Aw trip-hop! Trip-hop was my default listening as a teenager. As well as the trip-hop trinity I own or have owned albums/singles by:

Ruby
Shara Nelson
Nicolette
Olive
Earthling (this was shit even then)
Morcheeba
Moloko
Ragga & The Jack Magic Orchestra (Ragga = the girl on 'You Don't' by Tricky)
Ingrid Schroeder
Coco & The Bean
Sneaker Pimps
and Martina Topley-Bird's solo album.

and also one you forgot Kat - Nearly God, Tricky's 1996 side project ft. Bjork, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry, some other people. I wouldn't have ticked the single, 'Poems', but 'I Be The Prophet' was amazing.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Portishead was the constant soundtrack at the height of my goth phase. I would wear a black velvet floppy hat and wail along to "cos nobody loooooooves meeeeee it's truuuuuuuue, not like youuuuuu dooooooo" in my bedroom.

I turned out ok though!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

There is no way that Olive = trip-hop! They are trip-jungle!

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Tricky's Black Steel is actually better than the original.

[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]

Goth.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Everything with slow beats and a girl singing wistfully was trip-hop back then!

[zenith.livejournal.com]

Tricky was so iconic, effortlessly so much cooler and more fascinating than the others - and his contrarian bloody-mindedness helped rather than hindered for a while (anyone else remember him vehemently siding with Jacko rather than Cocker after the Brits?) - but at the end of the day, his discography has the most dross in it. Shame.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Which Tricky stuff was Alison Goldfrapp on?

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Martina Topley-Bird just sounds like it is a completely made-up name from FHM or Nuts or something.

I liked Morcheeba and Moloko.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I know bug all about trip-hop and am sort of happy for this to continue - bluddy teenagers, if you're going to be goths do it PROPERLY with a pint of snakebit and black innit.

I think I liked one Portishead song though, it's the one I have on twelve inch record, it's the OTHER one which isn't the nobody looooves me one. ?

[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]

'Safe From Harm' beating 'Unfinished Sympathy' - wow and hurrah! Not that I don't love the latter - another couple of ticks and I'd've ticked it - but it's always been the inferior Shara Nelson track to me. She just sounds stronger on 'Safe From Harm'. Blue Lines is probably the weakest of their three good albums actually (I refuse to acknowledge 100th Window), but the best cuts off Protection and Mezzanine weren't the singles (viz: 'Better Things', 'Inertia Creeps', 'Group Four').

Portishead's second album was pretty great, too. Despite its coffee table rep, Dummy sounded pretty fucked-up and weird to me when I first heard it; Portishead is even more strung-out. 'Half Day Closing' is incredible.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

'Pumpkin'.

[the-roofdog.livejournal.com]

Portishead's Cowboy was a single wasn't it? I remember coz it had no mention of the song title anywhere on the record or the sleeve.

[the-roofdog.livejournal.com]

Ah, maybe because it was a promo. It would've got a tick from me.

[the-roofdog.livejournal.com]

I rly want to hear Tricky covering 'This Corrosion' now.

[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.

[martinv.livejournal.com]

Used to hate all of this. My bad. Recently come round to Portishead (in a big way) and Massive Attack. Still heard very little Tricky.

I only ticked Live With Me because of the Twilight Singers cover. Ahem.

[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.

[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, 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.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'Earthling (this was shit even then)'

'Nefisa' is good!