T/S: TRICKY vs DIVINE STYLER

I think that if you only focus on Spiral Walls and pretend that Maxinquaye is bad or non-existent then this conclusion makes sense. But Directrix was v. boring the couple of times I heard it, and Ned is wrong about Maxinquaye here (what is the meaning of "overrated" here Ned? Of course it's overrated, but it's still Tricky's best album, though I like NG and PMT too - have you discussed this on another thread?)

I love the second half of Maxinquaye - it has "You Don't" and "Feed Me" on it!

What happened to the singer of "You Don't"? I think she was Icelandic and put out some reputedly fucked up album that was the best thing ever, circa 1997 maybe? But I never heard it.

xpost to Tim

And of course, I'm aware that Ned is probably full of the brown stuff, as usual.

I mean career wise "Strugglin" is the most important song on Maxinquaye, his following three albums were basically exercises in trying to one-up its deathcrawl narcissistic dystopianism.

SHOEGAZE KING OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA!!!

Maxinquaye is to me a fundamentally *boring* record, and I can't explain it any more plainly than that. Something about it just never gelled for me, and trust me, I gave it chances, then and now. I'll grant a couple of songs, but that's it (much preferred the Gravediggaz/RZA remix EP). Nearly God, though, partially because it wore its gothiness even more openly (Siouxsie and Depeche covers, of course I'm going to like the damn thing!) and partially because of who he roped in to help -- was anyone else giving Terry Hall the time of day then? -- works well enough as an experiment while PMT has this obsessive focus combined with a more fragile prettiness which is compelling start to finish.

Directrix I can't speak to, haven't heard it. I'll get around to it.

Probably. Not positive.

"Suicidal Thoughts" from Ready to Die is all something like "Strugglin" is trying to be, and does it better. This said I like your concluding three-word punch there, which also describes the Swans circa 1984. (Then they got pretty, which in turn explains Tricky's "Makes Me Wanna Die.")

My point was more that I have difficulty accepting Vahid's explanation of Maxinquaye's flaws as being the key to your non-enjoyment - because by that logic you should dislike his follow-ups even more.

I can sort of accept the notion that Maxinquaye is boring though, a different kind of boring maybe. Perhaps it doesn't drag enough?

TBH I can see the value of pointing out the Siouxsie and Depeche covers on Nearly God but these are actually among its weakest moments surely!

*shrug* You got me! It's just an album that resolutely refuses to connect.

TBH I can see the value of pointing out the Siouxsie and Depeche covers on Nearly God but these are actually among its weakest moments surely!

I'll grant that they work better in concept than in execution. But I appreciate the concept. ;-)

the 1st one 'word power', I see what you mean about an attempt to fit in, but there are too many great tracks on that record. even the single, not normal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUH2iYbLRoQ (ripped from mtv raps, check the way they scratch the video outro into the def jef intro... aw 1989)

I rate 'spiral walls' highly, the drugs may have helped him with all the left turns but he's making sense on it. most deranged, damaged album coming out of rap I can think of.

total respect for 'directrix', esp. title track, but a lot of it never sunk in the way the first two did, still waiting for his next one

Your loss...

"spiral walls" >>> "directrix".

please redirect to T/S: MARTIKA TOPLY-BURD vs TRACY THORN vs BETH G>

i have. tricky blows.

ned, you should really check out that house of pain album with divine all over it. very dark and weird. divine kinda sleeps thru it, but it's good anyway. you can buy it for 2 or 3 bucks anywhere on the web. nobody wants it.

And the comparison is an apt one (he said, having been listening to 'i' the other day).

its really not heavy handed at all. hes usually whispering or cooing the trippy mindfuck planet of islam nonsense except for the part where they are bad brains for like 3 seconds and the music is pretty. 69 is way more annoying!

writing about divine for phil's book last winter drove me a little batty. i listened to all that stuff like a hundred times. maria's family has a little shack on the water here and i went over there with a boombox and blasted stuff for hours. it was so dreary and wet and desolate and then i made the mistake of playing that me phi me album for some reason and i packed up my shit and went home. i was losing it. i was really happy to finish that thing.

Heh, I only just remembered you were doing that. :-) Finally writing in detail about Loveless was hard!

Me Phi Me -- yeeps, I was thinking about him too when I first saw this thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UqqswlBxKk

seriously, especially with an album that's usually a buck or two whenever you find it

haha I came here to post that

i read that noz dudes blog post on divine styler and he seems to hold this view, but to me it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch unless youre one of those "its not hip-hop" bobbleheads (or maybe that meme wasn't in existence yet? btw i think its usually a worthwhile meme.), but then why would you like divine styler in the first place? i guess it was still sorta crazy to mostly forget about rapping AND beats!

Got it a couple of months after it came out. Fellow DJs at KLA at UCLA before I graduated later that year were how I was clued in.

a side note: I am pretty sure that the original release of wordpower2 and the re-release on mo wax are slightly different...missing one or two cuts/skits. The fact that dude decided to begin the album with a 3 minute islamic prayer always blew my mind.

i just remember being really excited that their was a new divine styler album when spiral walls came out cuz it had been so long since word power. i loved it immediately. but i like weird stuff and always have. but i thought it was BEAUTIFUL too. i dunno. it spoke to me. even though i didn't really understand a lot of it. when i first heard ain't sayin' nothin' i don't think i was fully prepared for how out there the full-length would be. but i embraced it. i was always looking for stuff that was different. i mean, PE were noisy and weird too. it wasn't completely out of the blue. and i was a huge jungle brothers fan, and done by the forces of nature certainly had its out there moments. i wanted the whole world to sound like that for a while back then. or like am i black enough for you? and yet, i dug epmd and other less-weird stuff. it was all good.
in the thing i wrote i mention talking to a woman i worked with in philly back then and i told her how much i liked the jungle brothers. she just shook her head and made a sour face and said, mmm mmm, i don't like them. they're dirty! and i said, what do you mean, they don't even do the sex rap thing, they are all about being positive and stuff. and she said, NO, they DIRTY, they look like they roll around in the MUD! and i think that i really liked that. that people thought they were dirty!

by 1992, the weird was already calming down, 'the chronic' was out, suddenly styler comes back with 'spiral walls', with ten minute spoken word rants over abstract cluster-ish synth noodles & incoherent arrhythmic screaming over metal loops & styler's bluesy electric guitar onthe calm tracks, everything mostly self-played instruments, the only thing close to a single 'grey matter' is covered with atonal synth sludge... most people just averted their eyes, it's not like I don't see why many people would hate that record, it's self-indulgent, but it also comes together unlike anything else, still

I heard my copy before it came out when it was added to my college radio station's new releases, I'd only heard 'ain't sayin nothin' so I checked it out, and wtf. over eight tracks I went from thinking 'this guy's lost his mind' to 'this record is fucking beautiful'

I checked out 'directrix' for the first time in a few years last night, I'm still halfway on a lot of it but the second half is really solid

I have no opinion of the Divine Styler stuff since I haven't heard any of it. "Strugglin'" is the only duff track on Maxinquaye ("Feed Me" is its secret masterpiece), and Maxinquaye is 800 times better than anything else Tricky ever did apart from "Poems" and "Makes Me Wanna Die." The end. [/pedant]

if it is house is it house and homophobic, mocking house and homophobic or mocking house and homophobia or am i nuts?

ps matos directix is on emusic you must get that shit for free. also i found typos in your breaks dozen!

Scott's essay in Marooned is great and everyone should buy Spiral Walls for $5 on Amazon.

So, whatever happened to Divine Styler? It's been over 10 years since Directrix, and after that he's apparently only made a few guest appearances on other people's records, but even the newest of those is from 2003. Has he stopped doing rap altogether?

Finally listening to Spiral Walls. Deleted for years but on Spotify. Jesus Christ, what a strange record. At times actively awful (Mystic Sheep Drink Electric Tea) but in an authentically bold, nutso way. Like so many "far-out" hip hop albums it's actually better when it cleaves closest to beats and rhymes (Grey Matter, Livery) than squealing sub-Hendrix guitar and portentous spoken-word. Still, a remarkable piece of work for 1991. Did it sell more than 100 copies?

But in answer to the thread title, no fucking way is it better than Maxinquaye.

I agree that the guitar parts and spoken word bits on Spiral Walls are sometimes kinda too much, IMO Word Power 2 is Divine Styler's best attempt at making an "out there" hip hop album that still remains enjoyable from the beginning to the end. Especially the beats on WP2 are as hard as on the first album, and as experimental as on the second, but without any boring art rock vibes. Too bad he seems to have pretty much quit doing music after that, IMO Word Power 2 is an all-time classic of dark sci-fi rap, and it would've been hella interesting to hear where he would've gone from there. Every one of his three albums is experimental in a different way from the other two, and in a way that ties to rap scene of the moment, so I'd love to hear his take on 21st century hip hop.

Btw, even if Spiral Walls is deleted, it's not particularly hard to find a CD copy of it. I got a new copy from Amazon for 15 Euros.

So, there's a new Divine Styler album coming out next month, his first one in 15 years! The first single and video are pretty dope:

http://vimeo.com/89191955

His flow and lyrics haven't much changed since Directrix (which isn't a bad thing, really), but the beat (presumably self-produced, like most of his stuff) is something new, and I really like it! The album cover is quite pretty too:

http://www.gammaproforma.com/images/will-barras-divine-styler.jpg

If you pre-order the album straight from label, you can already download the tracks (plus instrumental plus a bonus track). I haven't had a chance to listen to the full album yet, but I'll report back once I've done that.

I love Tricky live in the late 90s. The dub rock thing that approaches Can in places.
There is a fantastic live video that was recorded in Shepherd's Bush. I think it was originally broadcast with a biography documentary. You get clips of the performance on the A Ruff Guide dvd but not the whole thing. Unless it's been put on a later version.
Tricky seems genuinely posessed at times.

New interview with Divine Styler as well

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/04/divine-styler-return-hip-hop-radical-cult-figure?CMP=share_btn_fb

So, there's a new Divine Styler album coming out next month,

whaaaaaaaaaaaaa

lol is "architectonic" the most divine styler song title possible

The new DS album is p good! Very industrial-sounding

Yeah, the beats are cool, but TBH his flow has gotten kinda stiff, it's so monotone and samey throughout the album. I wish Def Mask would have a couple of tracks where he tries something different, like "Time Fold 79" on the previous album.