1. Overcome 2. Ponderosa 3. Black Steel 4. Hell Is Around the Corner 5. Pumpkin 6. Aftermath 7. Abbaon Fat Track 8. Brand New You're Retro 9. Suffocated Love 10. You Don't 11. Strugglin' 12. Feed Me
Tricky is basically "The Godfather of Trip-Hop" and is well known for inventing the genre along with bands such as Portishead. After leaving fellow Trip-Hop group Massive Attack, Tricky brings us his debut solo album with dark, rich, layered beats, and sound landscapes accompanied by the beautiful voice of former partner-in-crime, and mother of his child, Martina Topley-Bird. Voted album of the year by NME Magazine this this is the quintessential album of the genre. If I were stranded on a island, and could only have 6 CD's with me, this would be one of them. It is really THAT good, from the first to the last track.
Retains a certain chilled edge Submitted on: 2009-07-02
3 1/2
Although my involvement in this trip-hop classic has trailed off a bit over the years, many tracks, especially in the latter half, remain undeniably intoxicating and prove there was such a time when the artist was producing visionary material.
Classic Trip Hop Submitted on: 2009-02-25
Tricky's solo debut, "Maxinquaye," is classic trip hop. Indeed, from what I've read, it's one of the seminal works of the genre. A mellow groove runs throughout the disc. Be advised, there are lots of sexual references. I was a little surprised that Tricky did not play a more prominent role in the vocal mix. That being said, Martine Topley-Bird's cool, detached vocals work perfectly with the music. Alison Goldfrapp also makes a nice contribution on "Pumpkin." The last four songs are not as strong as the first eight. Still, this is a really good CD. If you like Massive Attack and Portishead, like I do, you should like this too. Highly recommended.
GREAT DEBUT; THIS IS THE TRICKY YOU WILL WANT. Submitted on: 2008-07-09
I HAVE MANY MAXIVE ATTACK AND PORTISHEAD CDS, I BOUGHT TWO TRICKY CDS; MAXINIQUE AND PRE-MILLINEUM. MAXINIQUE IS THE ONE TO HAVE. IT CONTINUES THE MELLOW THEME OF HIS PREVIOUS COLLABORATIONS. I'D STAY AWAY FROM PRE-MILLINEUM, IT'S DOES SOMETHING TO TRICKY'S VOICE THAT CAN START A HEADACHE...SOME OVER OR UNDER SYNTHESIZED NOISE.
Fascinating sound, but emotionally lacking. Submitted on: 2008-05-19
Listening to Maxinquaye, it's clear that Tricky had to break with Massive Attack. His vision was just too different. Maxinquaye is a dense, heavily textured album, more like a sound collage than a pop record. Massive Attack's albums, by contrast, have a clean and direct pop approach, especially Protection, which prompted Tricky's departure.
Maxinquaye feels "dirty," in the sense of something fertile and organic, fashioned from soil and resin. There are no clean distinctions between instruments. "Hell Is Round The Corner" pulses with weird, wafting samples of vocals and keyboards, glued to the lazy drums, like honey languidly dripping down the wall of a huge beehive. Tricky's bizarrely distorted, insect-like vocals complete the analogy. The percussion is recognizable as an instrument, but it has none of the clean thump of the drum machines used in typical electronica. The bone-dry rattle in "Ponderosa" doesn't quite sound like a live performance, but it doesn't sound like a machine either. It's like something the hive played by itself.
Of course, Tricky's style still owes a lot to Massive Attack. Like them, he varies his vocalists (there are four in all, including him). He doesn't even take the lead until the fourth track, and even when his voice is prominent, it usually shares the song equally with Martina Topley-Bird, the album's main voice. She's quite a find. Her voice expresses absolute detachment, occasionally tinged with resignation. Her performance in the cover of Public Enemy's "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos" surpasses Chuck D himself, and this despite the fact that her voice expresses no bluster or aggression, just hopeless urgency. She also finds a very peculiar vocal style for that song, a half-sung rap that follows a crazed dance rhythm. That one song might make the album worth the price. Elsewhere, she sings more conventionally, but generally refrains from excessive displays of emotion. Detachment is the order of the day here.
Also making an appearance is Allison Goldfrapp, before her solo career, but after her eye-catching turn on Orbital's Snivilisation. In "Pumpkin," she gives an extremely incoherent performance (much like on the Orbital album), drawing out the syllables in every word until it's impossible to tell what she's saying. But on this album, that's somehow fitting -- her voice sinks into the swampy ambient muck and becomes part of the dripping honey.
Despite the dense sound, the album surprisingly still has a lot of pop appeal. Most notably on "Aftermath," where the hook is created by a muted guitar tone, set to a dance beat, both undercut by ambient rumbling. There are no pop-style choruses, just recurring vocal lines, occasional sharp breaks in the rhythm, and a flute that strains from the blurry background. But the interplay between these elements is very memorable.
So, this is a fascinating and original album. But, even though Maxinquaye is denser, richer and probably more musically inventive than Protection, I still prefer Massive Attack's album. Sorry, Tricky. Massive Attack combine earthiness and sensuality with a kind of lonely romantic warmth. "Protection" encourages "you" to help a depressed friend, and suggests that they'll help you later when you need it. Tricky exchanges such quaint notions for decadence and dysfunction, which can also be depicted powerfully in music. But his persona does not make these topics compelling.
Sadly, Tricky is not much of a writer. All of his best lines on this album are recycled from his verses on "Karmacoma" and "Eurochild" from Protection. In addition to plagiarizing himself, he also lifts from "Ghosts" by Japan to fill out the end of "Aftermath." The original lines that he wrote for this album are much more simple both in rhythm and content.
Tricky doesn't make much of an impression as an MC either. Again this is because his non-recycled lines are simplistic, so there's not much room to show off. But Robert del Naja's rapping on Protection runs circles around Tricky's performances here. It was a wise decision to retreat into the shadows and let Martina handle most of the vocals. The one time where Tricky takes a shot at a full-blown rap song, on "Brand New You're Retro," he's strangely unconvincing. He engages in typical thug posturing, but he doesn't sound tough at all. He actually sounds more like an overly sensitive teenage boy lashing out impotently at people who are laughing at him.
Most importantly, Tricky is just not very charismatic. He sounded good in Massive Attack, as a darker counterpoint to Robert del Naja, but when he's by himself, he sounds like a sullen, uninteresting narcissist who uses his alleged inner torment as an excuse to be callous. When the time comes to bring all the different threads of the album together with some kind of unifying theme, the best he can come up with is, "They say I'm insane, but I'm more normal than most / Struggling so hard." And why is he struggling so hard? Because he's "exhausted with the mundane," which is how high school students justify cutting class. And then the self-aggrandizing rhetorical question: "Do you know what it's like to struggle? Have you ever had to struggle?" And so forth, on and on like this, repeating the word "struggling" over and over, all of this taking place in an unbearably long track appropriately called "Struggling." It's also the least musically interesting track on the album -- Tricky's mumbling is upfront, backed only by crashing drums and Martina's uncharacteristically hysterical vocalizing.
Because of this, the album leaves a mixed impression. One can't help but admire the unique sound, but in the end it feels somewhat hollow. Like a play that has elaborate and original set design, but mediocre dialogue. So it's worth a look, but it falls short of classic status.
Classic!!!
Retains a certain chilled edge
Classic Trip Hop