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Jan 5, 2011The thematic attack here is pretty surgical, cutting most of the time to the gangsta life he's so glad he sidestepped as a youth. The individual pieces are well-defined by his muzzy standards.
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With his latest album, Mixed Race, Tricky picks up where 2008's Knowle West Boy (named after his rough birthplace) left off, exploring his diverse background, sonic heritage and frequently unforgiving surroundings with sounds as much as words.
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Q MagazineAnother smart and limber record. An astute choice of collaborators plays its part. [Oct 2010, p.116]
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Yes its weighed down by some empty dancefloor tat, but it's probably the strongest record work Tricky has put out this decade; definitely much more of a comeback than Knowle West Boy was.
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Mixed Race brims with well-formed songs played and sung with clear-headed emotion.
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Dense yet accessible, fleeting but full of memorable moments, Tricky's done here what he always does at his best: let the listener share the soundtrack of his involving, nomadic, outsider spirit.
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Perhaps surprisingly, Adrian Thaws' Tricky schtick has yet to get old, with the only missteps on this, his ninth, album arriving when he conforms to, rather than resists, convention. Where it's good however, it's superfly.
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Even if "Time To Dance" doesn't quite ignite the desire to boogie it--like the rest of Mixed Race--awakens something else you might not associate with Tricky: a burning interest to hear what he'll do next.
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Mild as it might be, Mixed Race is a solid effort from someone who insists on sticking around.
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Ultimately, Mixed Race, with its simmering tension, is a worthy follow-up to Knowle West Boy, and a fine entry in Tricky's catalog overall.
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UncutTricky has a frustrating tendency to lurk behind his collaborators, and one has to fight the feeling that ideas rarely gel. [Oct 2010, p.106]
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It's only on 'Ghetto Stars' when that ominous whisper comes to the fore, that Mixed Race excites, and a cascade of strings that don't so much make us yearn for past glories as wonder what Tricky thinks he has left to prove.
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Mixed Race doesn't always hang together, but it is the work of someone with a renewed creative appetite.
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while there are moments when his old jaggedness cuts through--the scraping "Early Bird" brings Tom Waits to mind, while "Ghetto Stars" has an eerie keening quality suggestive of industrial screech--Mixed Race is long on half-digested detours.
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Under The RadarEven if Mixed Race plays too much like its influences, there are the identifiable shudders and spookiness that go with the genre-bending multicultural-ness that defines Tricky. [Fall 2010, p. 64]
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Mostly a failure, but with enough glimmers of a true comeback to tease fans into checking out the next one.
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But what that album [Knowle West Boy] had in abundance--loud guitars, noisy electronics, new ideas--this comparatively minimal one lacks.
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Despite unwittingly creating an album whose skin-deep sheen happens to be a metaphor for his career-long relationship with his audience, Tricky is offering us little more than an appetizer.
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It might be difficult to differentiate after nine full-lengths, but Mixed Race may be the least engaging album we've heard from Tricky to date.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 8
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Mixed: 3 out of 8
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Negative: 1 out of 8
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Feb 20, 2012
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Oct 12, 2010