| ANGELS WITH DIRTY
FACES
Tricky * * * Island Records |
| Trip-hop pioneer Tricky
takes his trademark trance-dance music and gets bluesy within the hypnotic
confines of his repetitions. These chants for the rave generation are interesting
musically, relying on urgent rhythm renderings.
You'd have to be Popeye to decipher exactly what the Trickster is actually muttering about, but even the casual listener - with the proper head - could appreciate and enjoy the atmospheric acoustics that tap into the rave mantras and the blues influences that seem to be inevitable when you record in New Orleans, as Tricky did. Although his longtime musical pal Martina Topley-Bird appears on a number of the disc's dozen tunes, it's when Tricky turns a tune with P.J. Harvey that the disc is at its best. That song, "Broken Homes," is a surging composition that mixes a second-line marching rhythm with Harvey in the lead, singing like an escapee from the Kit Kat Klub. Later in the tune, a gospel choir twists the piece into a contemporary R & B composition. In spite of interesting snippets of lyrics about dead rockers and rappers such as Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, this is a disc designed move your body, not your head. |
| "Angels..." presskit |