TRICKY’S previous album ‘Knowle West Boy’ was a triumphant artistic rebirth, for many of us the one we’ve been hoping for ever since the heady days of his acclaimed debut ‘Maxinquaye’. It still had an edge, but the cloak of paranoia that swamped even the best moments of his albums from ‘Pre-Millennium Tension’ onwards seemed to have been lifted. Enough for some decent tunes to have broken out from the Trickster’s self-imposed artistic ghetto at last.
The heartening news is that his new album ‘Mixed Race’ proves it was no mere flash in the pan. Although it’s housed in a typically mysterious shot of our hero semi-obscured in a cloud of pungent blunt smoke, it’s the sound of Tricky emerging from the shadows of his cult cocoon with his most focussed and engaging work to date.
Brevity is the key word here. Clocking in at an economic (and just right) 29 minutes, ‘Mixed Race’ is direct and confident throughout. I can only speculate whether his newly-adopted home base (Paris) may have had some bearing on this, but whatever Globally-inspired elixir he’s on, I’d be happy to have a pint of it, thanks very much.
As you might expect from a record which counts Bobby Gillespie, Blackman and North African musician Hakim Hamadouche amongst its’ collaborators, ‘Mixed Race’ is suitably eclectic and diverse. Yet it flows seamlessly, never threatens to flag and pulls of an impressive number of sonic heists.
Trailer single ‘Murder Weapon’ is an immediate attention grabber. Built around what appears to be Duane Eddy’s ‘Peter Gunn’ theme, its’ bogglingly catchy “shiny gun, shiny gun” refrain and lyric about removing fingerprints gives it a sinister, noir-ish feel but never harm its’ chances of crossover success. Equally playful is the sultry swing of ‘Come to Me’, while the robust, rap-addled ‘Kingston Logic’ simply breezes past. Well, at least until Tricky’s obscene phone call vocal asserts “it’s not a fucking love song” and brings you back down to earth with a thud.
Having already helped launch the careers of Martina Topley-Bird and Alison Goldfrapp, Tricky is well known for his ability to search out quality vocal foils. With Irish-Italian Franky Riley, he has done it again. Her velvet-y voice melds seamlessly with Tricky’s serrated invective on the smooth’n’cinematic ‘Ghetto Stars’, while the record’s Parisian influence is all too apparent on the jazzy, Left Bank-inspired set-piece ‘Early Bird’. Tricky gives it a Bristolian twist, however, with the addition of some wonderfully atmospheric Don Cherry-style trumpet.
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Even more exotic is ‘Hakim’, not surprisingly co-written with French-Moroccan performer Hakim Hamadouche. It recalls the mythical African-flavoured fusion Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart have tapped into so successfully in the past and they pull it off with aplomb. If this track is the album’s mystical venture into the Atlas Mountains, tracks like the fractured, dub-inspired likes of ‘Every Day’ and ‘Really Real’ (featuring Bobby Gillespie) speak equally effectively in hard, urban tongues. The closing track, ‘Bristol to London’, meanwhile, is the sound of Tricky literally bringing it all back home courtesy of a fierce, electronic-tinged track featuring one of his siblings, Marlon Thaws’ vivid rapping.
‘Mixed Race’, then, is an absolute belter. Its’ author’s background may (in his own words) have found him “going between cultures”, but the music he’s produced here is an exhilarating and original hybrid which makes marrying great tunes and pushing boundaries seem as natural as breathing. If you’ve previously written Tricky off, this one will give you an almighty kick up the arse, but the aural pleasure that bequeaths will soon usurp the pain.
Hear 'Murder Weapon' by Tricky on Soundcloud
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