Tricky apparently loathes the term trip-hop to describe his music, but I would say it’s the best way to describe the music. It is more rounded and full than most trip-hop encompassing quite a lot of singing and guitar, in with the whispered rapping style and low-fi segments of the album.
There are some very contrasting styles, the very slow, minimalist and poetic Joseph, is closely followed followed by a guitar, and keyboard led C’mon Baby and the loud hip-hop shoutings of Council Estate. This contrast of styles creates a nice blend of colours, but doesn’t stray to far from the original objectives.
As well as variants to the left and to the right as far as style, there’s also a vertical shift between the light and dark, as far as the tone of the music. There are some very chilling pieces on the album, the most note worthy being Past Mistake, which send lightning bolts down my spine and nearly caused me to jump out of the window. One of the happier songs, Slow, is about dancing, how much happier could you be?
The album, slots together quite well, all of the pieces fit together smoothly and the finished product is quite wholesome and rather enjoyable.
Listen to this album: While hanging upside down
Rating: 80
Extracts from ‘Joseph’, ‘C’mon Baby’, ‘Slow’ and ‘Far Away’
This album has a strange talent of talking to your brain directly. It does so in sometimes a very funny way and sometimes a very sad and depressing way and it’s this contrast that causes the greatest impact to occur.
Scroobius Pip sounds like some guy down the pub chatting about stuff that just happens to fit to the music that’s playing in the background. The fact that he’s talking to you on a personal level makes the messages he’s trying to convey, seem so much more appropriate.
Some songs take a really weird take on a common theme and turns it around to make it funny and provoking. One of the main ones that does this is ‘Tommy C’ that starts with an intro that they’re about to partake in a song about beauty and the definition of the word and then proceed to talk about the life of Tommy Cooper. This is a very moving song and by the end I’m lying on the floor wailing like a little girl.
There’s a great division between the songs about life and the songs about music. The song ‘Fixed’ is all about the current state of British hip hop and about how he thinks turned into a medium of lows common denominators and the effect this is having on the art form.
The whole album is very well written, and the music is really good as well.
Listen to this album: While combating stupidity in art.
Rating: 89%
Extracts from ‘Development’, ‘Tommy C’, ‘Fixed’ and ‘Waiting for the beat to kick in’
