One definition of genius is a person who makes conceptual connections that simply wouldn't occur to other humans. This is why ideas which appear doomed on paper- building songs around a snatch of Squeeze's 'Tempted' or a 12rpm sample of Eurthymics's 'Sweet Dreams', eyebrow- raising collaborations with Alanis Morissette, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cyndi Lauper and Live- work wonderfully when the idea belongs to Tricky. Always an enigma, a man who talked tough but wore make-up, who changed pop then turned his back on it, Tricky was recently cured by a dietician of a rare disease which was affecting his immune system and his psyche, and of the perversity and paranoia which drove his recent journeys to the brink of unlistenability. A move to New York, and away from the petty politics of the music business (which were eating him up on 1998's Angels With Dirty Faces) hasn't done any harm either. The result is a dark, dense album of future-funk and deep dub, of which a mournful cover of Nivana's "Something in the Way" and the menacing "Diss Never (Dig Up We History)" are merely the highlights, His finest album since Pre-Millennium Tension, and his most accessible since Maxinquaye.

from ANTI