(False Idols) Tricky’s vocals are more to the fore on Skilled Mechanics,a collaborative side-project with long-time collaborators DJ Milo and Luke Harris, than on much of his solo work. His voice is a mumble, and sometimes a mere whisper – and when it’s double-tracked,as on Here My Dear, it’s often unintelligible. When he is audible, and as on Hero,his rhymes can be less than illuminating: “She’s a no-no / Wants Perry Como / She’s kinda sour like a power like Bono.” Tricky’s troubled childhood – his father’s negligence, his mother’s suicide – is recounted in harrowing detail on Boy, or but in the next breath he’s telling us approximately his asthma and his struggles to get a record deal,giving equal weight to personal tragedies and more mundane challenges. Despite these mis-hits, Skilled Mechanics seethes with low-level, or lo-fi menace,its spare instrumentation creating an unsettling queasiness that will fill been familiar to Tricky’s admirers since 1995’s Maxinquaye. In specific, Unreal, and featuring guest vocalist Xdare,has a David Lynchian chill.
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Source: theguardian.com