The J0rdan S. listening club

this next song is on some days my favorite song ever

10. black ivory - mainline

hey, this is cool -- i dig this stuff, definitely -- not blowing me away or anything cuz i think i'm a sucker for, like, less tight, song oriented r&b disco, if that makes sense

alright i'm gonna play video games & listen to the cut copy album for a bit now

im not sure -- less song oriented? or more song oriented? is what u prefer

iirc the structure is intro -> verse -> chorus -> verse -> chorus -> bridge -> groove (best most awesome groove ever) -> breakdown -> final extended groove

basically a pretty structured R&B track but w/ a euphoric coda ideal for dancefloors etc

6. tricky - hell is round the corner

i've obv seen tricky's name a ton before but never really bothered to check them (him? her?) out -- honestly can't decide if this is boring or secretly the shit -- i don't usually go for music that sounds like this, but the beat is a bit more interesting than i thought it was -- still don't really care much for the vocals -- i guess i like this song well enough but can't imagine listening to more than like 10 mins of it -- tbf this is how i feel about pretty much 95% of all uk beat music tho so

tricky is one dude, a producer/rapper, though for his first two albums his ex-gf martina topley-bird provided most of the vocals so it still pretty much fit the male/female duo taxonomy that so many trip-hop acts seemed to cleave to. "hell is round the corner" is unusually rap heavy for tricky. maxinquaye is a str8 up classic, nearly god and pre-millennium tension are secretly as good but got less attention cuz they were more "difficult". everything after that is varying shades of garbage and if you see any critics saying a new tricky album is a return to form you shouldn't believe them.

hang on if you're not familiar w/the beat already i guess that means you're not familiar with 90s portishead? oh man. next week.

There's a cover/reworking of PE's 'Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos' on the maxinquaye album that Lex mentions above if you wanna check it, goon that you are.

beginning to think i should've just saved maxinquaye for my album choice

weird to think that album introduced alison goldfrapp to the world

Didn't she sing with Orbital before that?

oh she may have done - i forget which came out first, maxinquaye or snivilisation - thought the latter was '96

i never knew who that was. thought it was a french woman for some reason. was she credited on the album?

also only just put together the smashing pumpkins sample and the title

yeah she's in the album credits but doesn't get a "featuring" or anything. the other non-martina vocalist was an icelandic singer called ragga, on "you don't", whose own single "man in the moon" is a bit of a lost gem.

"Are We Here" by Orbital was 1994. Awesome tune too.

Love love love "You Don't" and always wanted to hear the first Ragga album which I was reliably informed was excellent.

i always did, too. and never got round to it!

Maxinquaye is boring btw.

Maybe now, but in 1995 that shit was bending my brain.

honestly can't decide if this is boring or secretly the shit

How I feel about Tricky on most days.

beginning to think i should've just saved maxinquaye for my album choice

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Friday, January 21, 2011 3:50 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

well, you're up first in the albums rotation, and i don't really see a problem with an album pick being the same as a song pick if you want to do that.

Can i put my name down for something. I don't really feel like schooling jordan who apart from madonna-lapse always knows more than me, but this seems like fun.

Maxinquaye is boring btw.

― knits you a baby (The Reverend), Friday, January 21, 2011 4:15 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im w/ this. all i read about dude was how groundbreaking his shit was but it always seemed to be taking its cues from american rap but w/ more stilted brit talk-rapping over it. i guess this is like a tradition but i wish yall wouldnt saddle every uniquely british version of american rap w/ the 'visionary' tag, gets kind of eye-roll-y

yeah but how many critics kept listening to Tricky once there was more rapping than female singing?

Maxinquaye > any other "uniquely british version of american rap"

I regard Tricky as one more (but crucial!) part of Maxinquaye's smutty atmospherics. I understand wondering what the fuss is about now, years after Tricky's lapse into mannerism became complete, but if Maxinquaye was, like most of us, your intro to Tricky, it was intoxicating.

I should point out: he's much harder and conventional (not an insult) on Blue Lines, proving that, if he wants to, he can ride on flow as well as any MC.

when j0rdan gets back i want him to clarify his blurb on black ivory still! i rlly am unsure what he meant

Maxinquaye > any other "uniquely british version of american rap"

― gospodin simmel, Friday, January 21, 2011 7:29 AM Bookmark

Meh, I prefer Tinie Tempah.

and I love what Tricky does to old school stuff like "Lyrics of Fury" and "Black Steel."

His "Black Steel" cover is dope, I give you that.

For the uninitiated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDHl5djnYM4

describing maxinquaye as just "taking its cues from american rap" is so immensely reductive, esp given that the lead vocal on the majority of songs is not a rapper

and if you're talking about the beats, i pretty much love everything on it better than any early 90s (or earlier) american hip-hop beat

as someone who hates the overwhelming the majority of British rap and beat-driven music i fucks with Maxinquaye real real heavy

and if you're talking about the beats, i pretty much love everything on it better than any early 90s (or earlier) american hip-hop beat

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Friday, January 21, 2011 9:46 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, bullshit

i dont even hate maxinquaye or anything, i just dont think ive ever read something about it that wasnt so busy making a (larger superfluous & inaccurate, imo) case for its 'importance' rather than describing what actual works about the record & how it operates

i had your back on that argument re: MMLP but it feels less and less like people are still arguing Maxinquaye's importance over its general excellence and listenability (and i guess there are more and more artists openly influenced by it that its importance is probably easier to justify now anyway)

wrong reviews then. fuck importance, Maxinquaye is beautiful.

xp obviously

(and i guess there are more and more artists openly influenced by it that its importance is probably easier to justify now anyway)

― gosamosapodin simgibmelreel (some dude), Friday, January 21, 2011 10:03 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

what contemporary artists are influenced by or carrying these innovations forward now? trip hop in a tricky vein was sort of a cul de sac no? /pandora's box

i think i mean 'can of worms' not 'pandoras box' but im sick overtired & its early in the morning

i got the impression that every hot new artist in UK rap-ish music and a lot of hyped up US 'weird beat' music namechecked Tricky as a formative influence? i haven't actually heard most of those artists so i dunno how true that is but i got the impression he was becoming kind of a hip reference point again. (xpost)

i would love to do this if anybody wants to use me as a guinea pig in the future. i have loads of huge holes in my listening history.
also:
4. debbie deb - when i hear music
i've definitely heard this song a bunch & obviously i think it's a stone cold classic -- every part of this song is basically perfect
<3

ugh forks stop talking about letting people use you and fill your huge holes

jealous much?

i just dont think ive ever read something about it that wasnt so busy making a (larger superfluous & inaccurate, imo) case for its 'importance' rather than describing what actual works about the record & how it operates

this is the tim f thing of dismissing a record because of bad writing on it, what gospodin simmel said, who cares about the reviews, it's an amazing listening experience.

and yeah you could def argue that dubstep, post-dubstep etc is the current equivalent of trip-hop - i mean with the bristolian guys like joker and guido it's particularly obvious that they're following in the portishead/tricky lineage. and lots of hyped indie acts seem to be namechecking them too.

dubstep sounds to me like tripped out IDM but what do i know

I don't get anything out of listening to Maxinquaye though, it's mostly a blank to me. Saying you prefer the beats to any early 90s US rap is just foreign to me that I can't even deal with it.

the boy/girl dynamic of Maxinquaye moves me. the way the lyrics and the voices interact. of course it's not "Fear Of A Black Planet" or "Mama Said Knock You Out" but that's not the point.

I mean, it's just as good

and yeah you could def argue that dubstep, post-dubstep etc is the current equivalent of trip-hop - i mean with the bristolian guys like joker and guido it's particularly obvious that they're following in the portishead/tricky lineage. and lots of hyped indie acts seem to be namechecking them too.

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Friday, January 21, 2011 10:15 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

see yeah, i hate all this music so

maxinquaye >>> that stuff