Pitchfork

The world is completely covered with a gossamer of grime and Calgon can not possibly take you away. Everything (including Calgon) gives you cancer. And at 4:38 PM, Mountain Standard Time, a man in Montana, who gave up all material possesions and his job at Safeway to be one with nature, hideously cuts his foot on a rusty RC Cola can that fell from a Cessna. He was on his way to his cold mountain stream bath, but dies of acute tetanus. Luckily, Tricky was there back in '98 to pen the soundtrack to this madness.

"What's that smell? Tricky, check under your boot. I think you just crushed trip-hop and hip-hop."

Tricky and I are on a train to Cardiff in rainy Wales. Pitchfork has sent me to review Angels With Dirty Faces-- not the James Cagney flick, but the dark new album by Tricky, the man sitting slumped next to me in a worn grey hooded sweatshirt, hood up.

"Tricky, are you sick of the labels 'electronica' and 'trip-hop'?"

"Yearh."

"'Cause I was thinking: I think we should come up with a new genre for you. I'm the man to do it for you, babe. Your new album is like hardcore jazz. More Coltrane and Soul Train than the Prodigy and Chemical Brothers. Plus, you hired a band to play on it. And it's all deep, deep bass and clubbed drums with your muted growl on top... it's very percussive. It's thick and heavy... and harsh. But groovy. Hardcore jazz... How about 'Hazzcore?' or maybe 'Hazz-hop.'"

"Sounds fookin' stupid."

"Well, it's better than 'trip- hop.' 'Cause, babe, that just sounds too damn hippy. You're more brutal and sexy."

"I'm goin' to sleep. Go type whatever."

Few musicians spill their brain out onto the studio floor like Tricky. It's difficult to reference this album sonically to anything that's come before, and that's the highest compliment. It fuses the soul of old Public Enemy records with a new breed of anti-rock. At times the music sounds almost freeform, with drums starting and stopping and vocals and guitar noise flying in and out, but it all stays afloat and funky on a foundation of head-bobbing bass. I've yet to listen to this eerie thing during the day, reserving spins for long drives home at 3 am.

Angels With Dirty Faces is a haunting album from a tortured soul. Oddly enough it's a beautiful album. Even those grime-covered city streets and rusty cola cans are aesthically beautiful if you take a step back. Unrelenting.