Tricky - Bad Dream

[Leon]

Originally Posted by adam

not allowed!

Yeah he's playing with fire!

[Downtown]

So yeah, candida + weed + Martina + Tricky = brilliance

Darn tooting!
Though I dont agree martina was the main influence on that, I think its all to do with him beating candida by giving up wheat. Candida used to make him irritable and paranoid, he started giving it up around the time of juxtapose and the sudden chnage is clear, his mood lightens and he starts making a kind of music he just isnt suited to. Then blowback comes along and he's gotten a little bit healthier still and then by Vulnerable the guy is happier than he's ever been and the music just sounds so light and soft as a result.

I think the biggest problem is that now he is not in total control of every noise made on the album. He isnt a talented musician in the tradional sense which is what made him so great in the 1st place. He started using a real band in the studio all the time so he'd make a melody but the rest of the track is fleshed out by some soft arse session musicians who actually make structurally "correct" music whereas early tricky was incongrous, unorganised and brilliantly chaotic, something sesssion musicians are not likely to reproduce.

He used to make everything on a little Yamaha QY22 which is an awesome little portable sequencer, I have a QY70 and I find so many little instruments and noises on it that i recognise from tricky's earlier stuff, the strange punchy eerie strings on "I Be The Prophet" for example.
You listen to his earlier stuff that he made entirely himself with everything under his own control and its incredible. In a few interviews he talked about how he never tries to repeat things until they are perfect and then loop them, instead he'll record a melody played "live" for the whole length of the track and if he makes mistakes and misses beats etc, he just leaves it in just cos thats what happens and he likes the roughness it gives his music.

I dont think he does this anymore and that is possibly his biggest mistake, listen to Pre Millenium Tension for the best examples of what i mean. He recorded in some tiny place in jamaica, with a bare-bones selection of instruments and the chaos and dissarray in the resulting music is just like nothing else, Bad Things, My Evil Is Strong, Piano, Vent. He starts out with a meoldy and as the song continues he loses the tempo, misses beats, makes mistakes and by the end the track is just collapsing in on itself in a chaotic but fantastic and perfectly fitting mess. Ponderosa on maxinquaye being another good example, Poems, I Be The Prophet also good examples.
Chaos, mess, fractured rhythms, simmering paranoia tormented by some weird temptress that has just stumbled into his life and music that just sounds like his whole life is falling down around him.
Thats why I love Tricky.