Following his debut ‘Maxinquaye’ was never going to be an easy task for Tricky – the record defined a sound and a generation, and took abstract, stoned hip hop into the UK charts and around the world in the mid-1990s – but ‘Pre-Millennium Tension’ managed that comfortably.
Densely packed with Tricky’s trademark choking, paranoid beats, intelligent scepticism and guttural rhyme technique, and boasting three successful singles, this album took the Bristolian to a far deeper, murkier level than his debut. So much so that Q Magazine dubbed ‘Pre-Millennium Tension’ one of the 50 ‘Heaviest Albums Of All Time’.
Well-received by both fans and critics, and featuring long-time collaborator, the brilliant Martina Topley-Bird, ‘Pre-Millennium Tension’ is ripe for rediscovery.
Remastered, and replete with sleeve essay from Record Collector’s Paul McGuinness.