Tricky Does Great Covers

Tricky has a new album out. No one does breathy, atmospheric, post-trip-hop quite like Tricky (or even approaching the way he does it?).

What's really cool is he's dropped another cover. I may not be fully up with this running gag of homages (hard H thanks) to great songs (can someone tell me if there is one on Pre-Millenium Tension...?), but there is a great rock cover of Black Steel on Maxinquaye. The original Black Steel (+ "In The Hour Of Chaos"), as far as I know, (once again: "prove me wrong, kids, prove me wrong") is by none other than Public Enemy. So it was more of a political/conscious hard-hitting rap track, made over into a sung (of course by Martina), melodic punk track. Nice cover!

So, on the Knowle West Boy, the cover is of one of my favourite pop artists (possibly my number one? the mp3 stats indicate she's well up there), Kylie (Minogue).

The track is a great one, off the Fever album, which was of course a corker when it comes to electronic-pop music: Slow. This is right up Tricky's alley, breathy, atmospheric, sweaty. Of course Martina does most of the vocal but true to form Tricky's there muttering and whispering, breathing down her neck. Great new realisation of a good song. Also nice cover!

Come to think of it, I think the whole (genre) of dubstep owes something to Tricky. I'd wager he was putting out breathy and gutteral and hummy music before Burial was a teenager (?).

King Unique sacrifices "song" for relevant electro

I heard the King Unique remix of Gabriel & Dresden's "Tracking Treasure Down" on the weekend while helping out with our local house music radio show, Energy Flash on Radio 1.

My reaction was: the original was a great crossover clubby trance pop song, with a very pop/song structure, and King Unique succeeded in using the vocal over a much more constant/monotonous (i.e. the chord changes are not there) electro track.

Which is fine and all, obviously that's more relevant, and that's what I tend to be into a lot of the time, but for me it had the effect of making the vocal fairly irrelevant.

If you want to hear the King Unique remix, listen to the energyflash podcast. If you want to hear the original, get in a time machine and go back to last year and listen to Pete Tong's Essential Selection thru early/mid 2006.