Tricky - Blowback (2001) Limited Edition

I have no idea whether this will prove the smash Maxinquaye wasn't–well, actually I do, but I promise to keep it quiet if you do. For sure he's presented his new label with his first song album since then. Where once were textures you could write a poem about now are textures you can hang a tune on. And forget P.J. Harvey for clout, this one's got the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Alanis Morissette and, uh, Live and Cyndi Lauper–all of whom sound fabulous. Yes, he's still very down in the mouth. With him, that's a matter of principle. But his defiance is more coherent, his mysticism more visionary. And if it's not gauche of me to mention it, he rocks and does a Nirvana song, not necessarily at the same time.

Review by Robert Christgau

If Tricky had retired in 1996, his reputation would have been assured. At the age of 32, the former Adrian Thaws had co-written and appeared on two of the era-defining albums of the 1990s: Massive Attack's Blue Lines and Protection. He surpassed both albums - and changed the face of music - with his 1995 top-three solo debut, Maxinquaye, which fused hip-hop, strings and noise to invent the genre that became (to his annoyance) known as trip-hop. At the time, the words "genius" and Tricky were inseparable. By 1999, however, people were referring to Tricky with the far less complimentary "nutter".

As his albums became incomprehensible, Tricky seemed set to sabotage his career. He confessed to deliberately making records that would not get on the radio. Following his record company Island's corporate takeover by Polygram, there were disputes with the company and songs (I use the term loosely) aimed at individual executives. But all this paled in comparison with his personal life, where Tricky had become a walking volcano. There were numerous reports of extreme behaviour: random violence, disruptions in hotels (this was not a man who appreciated the wrong type of cheese). As Tricky pointed out last year, he didn't shoot anybody, but it was a close-run thing. At his most tortured, he considered shooting someone in the leg so he would be taken to prison, where he could be "cured". By then, nobody was even talking about the music anymore.

This backdrop is partly what makes Blowback such an astonishing record; it certainly marks the most remarkable career salvage since Jennifer Capriati's. But take the backdrop away and Blowback is still what it is: a musically radical but highly commercial opus; a return to form; a brilliant album.

Essentially, this is the record Tricky should have made after Maxinquaye - and yet the two collections could hardly be more different. Maxinquaye was dark, filmic, claustrophobic. Blowback is urgent, insistent, fast-moving and in a constant state of flux. It mangles everything from rap-metal (of which there's lots - the one Maxinquaye track that would fit in here is the metal-noise version of Public Enemy's Black Steel) to ragga, US power-pop, granite beats, supernatural ambience and even New Romantic. At the same time, it is uniquely, inimitably Tricky. Most surprisingly, it's often deliriously uplifting, even humourous, never more than on You Don't Wanna's wonderfully camp disfiguring of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams. The opening track, Excess (an unlikely, driving funk duet with Alanis Morissette and possibly Tricky's finest five minutes ever), spells out the new manifesto. It's an affirmation of belief in humanity, topped with the insistent refrain "Keep living". With the most singable tunes of his career, Tricky is reconnecting with the world.

According to Tricky himself, he had problems stemming from the sugar/ wheat allergy, candida. Most sufferers merely end up with bad skin, but Tricky experienced much rarer paranoia, mood swings etc. You have to boggle at a psyche that can withstand confessed "industrial" quantities of weed but is turned around by simply laying off the Hovis.

His single-mindedness and willpower are not to be underestimated. These qualities play out in surprising ways on Blowback, where he collaborates with Cyndi Lauper and Ed Kowalczyk from US rock journeymen Live - hardly the usual "cool" names. Such collaborations work because Tricky chooses who is right, not who has the biggest reputation. Notably, the singer who particularly excels is an unknown, Amber Sunshower, who takes on the role played on Maxinquaye by Tricky's ex-partner Martina, purring on the hypnotic Over Me (with rumbustious New York reggaeman Hawkman) and Your Name, an extraordinary, nursery-rhyme love song.

On Maxinquaye, Tricky promised to take us "through the corridors" of his own life. On Blowback, he's still touring the skeletons in his broom cupboard. Over a demented guitar riff from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Keidis, Girls tells of a horror birth - "Baby's breaking waves, got my face in my hands" - and explores Tricky's difficult childhood. Aged four, his mother died, possibly committing suicide; his father left soon afterwards. Maxinquaye paid tribute to his mother, Maxine Quaye, but here he seems keen to move on from the wreckage of his upbringing. "I'm not the son of your family affair," he growls, before delivering the album's crucial line: "I'm not a firestarter, cos I'm a little smarter."

Tricky has certainly wised up. Positivity has replaced hate as his primary concern, whether it's the ragga-Beatles Evolution Revolution Love ("Through love I'm gonna make it right") or Give It to Them's disillusion with an empty lifestyle: "Don't wanna live in bars / live it large, credit card… I like to talk more." Even so, he's hardly gone soft.

This being unpredictable Tricky, a return to the bad ways can't be ruled out, and two tracks dip musically (the Bauhaus-like dirge of Something in the Way and the superfluous closing piano doodle A Song for Yukiko). But otherwise, Blowback once again puts Tricky out on his own, with songs that deserve at least as wide an audience as Maxinquaye had.

Review by Dave Simpson, The Guardian

First, the bad news. There are no new tricks on BlowBack, the star-studded 2001 comeback by Tricky, the pioneering trip-hopper that wandered his way into the wilderness. He wandered so far that nobody really cared anymore if he had anything to say – particularly because he wound up saying the same thing, slightly differently, over and over again. He doesn't escape from this problem here, yet he's found a map – and that map is craft. He knew this before, since the best moments of Angels With Dirty Faces and Juxtapose were when he knew how to spin his signatures just right, so they jelled into something brilliant. He has the same gift here, and he extends it throughout the record, so this is the first record that really plays smoothly from start to finish since Pre-Millennium Tension. That, of course, isn't the same thing as being as good, since he has ceased to innovate, and he has a couple of annoying flaws, including his tendency to create one mood and sustain it without developing it, plus his love of dancehall toasting. The thing is, for all of his genius, Tricky doesn't really have the greatest taste in the world. Yes, he's worked with Björk and PJ Harvey, but he's also brought Bush into the studio, and here Live's Ed Kowalczyk, three members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Cyndi Lauper all contribute sonic coloring. The genius of Tricky is, he knows how to pull out the best in such unlikely collaborators, making it sound like a natural extension of his work. Then again, it could just be that John Frusciante and Flea know "Brand New You're Retro" so well, it's easy to turn it out again on "Wonder Woman." So, it's a mixed bag, but it plays sharper than his albums of late. Yes, there are some astonishing slips – the backing track of "Something in the Way" sounds great, but Hawkman, the ragga bane of this album, castrates it of its power – but, at this point, that's a given with Tricky. Once you get past that, once you stop expecting genius – or at least something that matches Maxinquaye (or even Tension) – it's much easier to enjoy BlowBack.

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 15. March 2012, 16:19

Tricky / Blowback

Used drive : Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200S Adapter: 2 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Installed external ASPI interface
Gap handling : Appended to next track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 32 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -6 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %d


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 4:43.19 | 0 | 21243
2 | 4:43.19 | 4:09.19 | 21244 | 39937
3 | 8:52.38 | 2:57.11 | 39938 | 53223
4 | 11:49.49 | 4:21.29 | 53224 | 72827
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6 | 21:36.49 | 2:39.71 | 97249 | 109244
7 | 24:16.45 | 3:35.44 | 109245 | 125413
8 | 27:52.14 | 2:50.64 | 125414 | 138227
9 | 30:43.03 | 4:51.24 | 138228 | 160076
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11 | 38:58.34 | 4:19.10 | 175384 | 194818
12 | 43:17.44 | 3:04.63 | 194819 | 208681
13 | 46:22.32 | 4:10.22 | 208682 | 227453
14 | 50:32.54 | 4:19.18 | 227454 | 246896
15 | 54:51.72 | 3:43.70 | 246897 | 263691


Track 1

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\01 - Excess.wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 82) [1ED0A27B]
Copy OK

Track 2

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\02 - Evolution revolution love.wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 82) [22B5B894]
Copy OK

Track 3

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\03 - Over me.wav

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Test CRC DC70E913
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Accurately ripped (confidence 82) [B5EE6E0C]
Copy OK

Track 4

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\04 - Girls.wav

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Test CRC EDD3C308
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Accurately ripped (confidence 82) [CB54ED65]
Copy OK

Track 5

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\05 - You don't wanna.wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 81) [5717C83C]
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Track 6

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\06 - #1 da woman.wav

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Test CRC F59E3D28
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Accurately ripped (confidence 80) [341C03DB]
Copy OK

Track 7

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\07 - Your name.wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 80) [05E89605]
Copy OK

Track 8

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\08 - Diss never (dig up we history).wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 80) [A89A64F2]
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Track 9

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\09 - Bury the evidence.wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 80) [29A649D6]
Copy OK

Track 10

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\10 - Something in the way.wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 80) [EEB0FAA7]
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Track 11

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\11 - Five days.wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 79) [B7E7490A]
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Track 12

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\12 - Give it to 'em.wav

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Accurately ripped (confidence 79) [C5F2C14E]
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Track 13

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\13 - A song for Yukiko.wav

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Test CRC 6EDF35AA
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Accurately ripped (confidence 77) [8CDA9E78]
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Track 14

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\14 - The hawkman is coming.wav

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Peak level 99.8 %
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Test CRC 4262E4ED
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Accurately ripped (confidence 79) [4E1C9209]
Copy OK

Track 15

Filename C:\Tricky 2001 - Blowback [Anti- 6596-2]\15 - Evolution revolution love (remix).wav

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Peak level 99.8 %
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Test CRC 3D422ED8
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Accurately ripped (confidence 79) [0ABAD6D7]
Copy OK


All tracks accurately ripped

No errors occurred

End of status report

foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2017-08-11 22:10:04

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Tricky / Blowback
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR6 -0.01 dB -7.19 dB 4:42 01-Excess
DR6 -0.01 dB -7.89 dB 4:09 02-Evolution revolution love
DR6 -0.01 dB -8.26 dB 2:57 03-Over me
DR6 -0.01 dB -7.49 dB 4:21 04-Girls
DR5 -0.01 dB -6.64 dB 5:26 05-You don't wanna
DR6 -0.01 dB -7.14 dB 2:40 06-#1 da woman
DR9 -0.01 dB -10.32 dB 3:36 07-Your name
DR6 -0.01 dB -7.65 dB 2:50 08-Diss never (dig up we history)
DR6 -0.01 dB -8.51 dB 4:51 09-Bury the evidence
DR6 -0.01 dB -7.49 dB 3:25 10-Something in the way
DR6 -0.01 dB -7.63 dB 4:18 11-Five days
DR5 -0.01 dB -6.62 dB 3:04 12-Give it to 'em
DR10 -0.01 dB -11.03 dB 4:11 13-A song for Yukiko
DR12 -0.01 dB -13.34 dB 4:19 14-The hawkman is coming
DR12 -0.01 dB -13.81 dB 3:46 15-Evolution revolution love (remix)
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 15
Official DR value: DR7

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 753 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================