The first release onTricky's Durban Poison label, this album from English collective TheBaby Namboos expands the boundaries of trip-hop (a genre which hasbecome rather tired lately), presenting interesting pop songs, soulfulmelodies and just enough rap and reggae to keep you interested. Thisalbum actually suprised me with its quality, especially considering thepoor caliber of Tricky's last album. The actual music on Ancoats2zambiais actually more reminiscent of groups like Massive Attack (who've longbeen innovators in the trip-hop genre) than Tricky, although hisinfluence is evident. Comparisons aside, this album is pretty tight.Tracks like "Get Your Head Down", "Late Night Antics" and the titletrack are funky and have a slight reggae influence, whereas tracks like"Holy" and "Hard Times" are much more soulful. These more soulfultracks feature wonderful vocals by Auroraborealis, who sounds verysimilar to the various female singers Tricky (who does make a guestappearance on a few tracks) has used over the years. Her contributionprovides part of the same sort of juxtaposition between sung femalevocals and harsher raps that Tricky has thrived off of using for hisentire career. As a bonus, this disc includes two excellent remixes ofthe title track, one by Portishead's Geoff Barrow and the other byDillinja (whose origin I'm unsure about). Although this album is quitegood and an impressive debut, I wouldn't quite rank it up there withthe output of trip-hop innovators like Portishead and Massive Attack.samples:
- due soon
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