Thursday, November 5, 2009

Re: King Midas Sound: Stone Cold Love at First Hear

Posted by Charles Mudede on Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:16 PM

What Dave Segal recently wrote about the darkling sounds of King Midas Sound:

[Producer] Kevin Martin and vocalist Roger Robinson strikes me as a fantastical fantasy project hatched from two of Charles Mudede's biggest musical crushes—Burial and Tricky.

The duo's album on Hyperdub, Waiting for You... (due in November), sounds like an ideal merging of those artists' phenomenal talents. Difference is, Robinson can really sing, emitting creamy, soulful sotto-voce sentiments in wispy clouds over Martin's subtly noir-ish lovers dubstep; main exception is "Earth a Kill Ya," a doom-laden, Linton Kwesi Johnson/SpaceApe-style ecological-warning manifesto.

The problem with this? For one, Tricky is for me a version, a dub, a decayed form of Bob Marley.


A decade ago, I wrote:

If one listens to "Feed Me" — an update of Bob Marley's "Concrete Jungle" — on Tricky's debut album Maxinquaye, their differences [between Marley and Tricky] become apparent. Though gloomy, Marley's "Concrete Jungle" was essentially inspirational: Out of the darkness of the city, he desperately hopes that "sweet life/must be somewhere to be found." But for Tricky, this concrete jungle is not something you faintly hope to escape, it is now your only religion: "You keep me singing while I'm drowning down into that two tone vision/I have been raised in this place and now concrete is my religion." "Feed Me" is fragmented, incomplete, uncertain. Tricky's is a world inhabited by burned out souls and "ghetto youth" who are not dangerous or potentially political, but vulnerable and not "free from love for one master."

Tricky is to Marley what SpaceApe is to Linton Kwesi Johnson. Tricky is in the aftermath of Marley, and SpaceApe is in the aftermath of LKJ. And where does this understanding locate Roger Robinson? He is in the aftermath of the Lonely Lover, Gregory Isaacs. Robinson is the dub of Isaacs. Proof? Listen to "Meltdown":


And then listen to Isaacs' classic, "Night Nurse":

We can hear the ghost of Issacs in the emotion Robinson brings to the words "come to my rescue," and "lord, I don't nobody else." Robinson is the Lonely Lover of our hyperdub moment.

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Comments (1) RSS

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Timrrr 1
Tricky's remake of Black Steel still kicks ass tho:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H3TqDu0T…
Posted by Timrrr on November 5, 2009 at 2:37 PM

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