There’s been a lot of talk about Tricky’s ‘return to form’ with his new Knowle Boy West album. I’m not so sure about the issues around that myself. There’s precedents in his last few albums to the things he’s doing now. ‘Council Estate’ itself wouldn’t have sounded at all out of place on Blowback or Vulnerable. My feeling is that it’s not so trendy to have to pull Tricky down anymore because his bubble, established in the mid-90s, has already been burst enough, so it’s OK to like his new work again. My personal view is that he’s been more consistent than he’s been given credit for over the years. Consistency, by way of segue, is not necessarily the case across these remixes of the new lead single.
The starting point is an obvious radio-friendly length edit of the version proper which does it’s job of getting Tricky’s shouty electro-rock anthem down to well under 3 minutes. South Rakkas Crew then sink in their teeth and their dubstep leanings suit Tricky to a tee, dubstep really being the spiritual grandchild of Tricky’s original output all those years ago – dark, brooding and definitely menacing. The Pow! Pow! remix comes up as the pick of the bunch, throwing 8-bit hooks into the jerky drum loops and heavily cut up vocal samples. Serge Et Rouge, however, really disappoint, throwing generic electro-house and seeing what sticks (not much does properly, imagine Tricky ranting over sub-standard 80s New Order). It also sounds like it’s been mastered for a completely different release, struggling to be heard. The Outlaws Can Take It Remix bounces the bottom end around a bit more and gets a little more rhythmically inventive, though it’s neither pumping nor overly weird, falling in a bit of a no-man’s-land middle ground. So, all up, a couple of mixes worthy of repeated listening (hopefully somewhere near a dancefloor) and a couple of others that really are just filler.
Adrian Elmer
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