Day 252: Tricky - Maxinquaye

Some days you have patter, some days you very much don’t. I’ve had a nice week but there’s nothing to say about it. Often that doesn’t stop me from yammering on about it, but today I’ve just got nothing to share. Let’s get straight into it with Tricky’s Maxinquaye.

Album cover courtesy of Island Records

Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws went from being known as Tricky Kid to just Tricky. He was hanging out with a collective known as The Wild Bunch in the late ‘80s, which later birthed Massive Attack. Tricky was a part of Massive Attack, but he left due to creative differences and repurposed some of the stuff he’d written for Massive Attack into his solo work. While he was still a part of Massive Attack, he saw a teenage girl, Martina Topley-Bird, sitting on a wall near his house singing to herself, and she became his collaborator and creative partner.

Released in 1995, Maxinquaye was Tricky’s debut solo album, which immediately turned him into a fairly reluctant celebrity. He’d done the album with a very unique electropunk mentality that didn’t really coincide with anything else, combining a wide variety of samples that shouldn’t work together and having Topley-Bird improvising and singing without ever having heard the song before. His co-producer Mark Saunders said, "It was a complete un-learning experience and it was also a total re-learning experience. Think of how to make a record, then forget everything you've learned and start completely backwards and upside down.”

I’m not doing this on purpose, but this is the third day in a row that I’ve gravitated toward a sexy or sex-themed album. This one is seductive, but somehow paired with a slightly unsettling and menacing air to it, and that juxtaposition is what makes it so interesting. It’s very far from being a depressing album, but there’s definitely a mood to it. I think Tricky’s lack of conventional method is also a huge contributing factor to the unique magnetism that this album has, and enough can’t really be said about Martina Topley-Bird’s gorgeous soft voice – it wouldn’t be the same without her.

What a vibe there is to this album, I almost started taking my clothes off on pure instinct alone. If I had to sum it up, I’d say it’s deliciously spooky-sexy. I don’t know why Tricky hasn’t had the same lasting power as some of his trip hop contemporaries when he’s clearly deserving of the same kind of praise. I thought I was listening to this for the first time but I did recognise a few songs, like  “Hell Is Round The Corner” and “Strugglin’”, but I’d completely forgotten about them. Tricky is going back on my playlists, I’m a huge fan of this album. 9/10.