Tricky’s groundbreaking and peerless 1995 debut-album ‘Maxinquaye’ is being reissued in triple-LP, single-LP, double-CD and digital formats.
‘Maxinquaye (Reincarnated)’
contains rarities and brand new versions of tracks many of which have not been officially released before – The single-LP contains the original album remastered at Abbey Road Studio. The super deluxe triple-LP set and double-CD contains six new “Reincarnated” versions of tracks recorded by Tricky in 2022, previously unreleased BBC session tracks recorded with a full live band in the autumn of 1995 as well ‘Black Steel’ performed live at Glastonbury that same year and it concludes with some rough monitor mixes. The digital version also includes all the remixes from the original single releases plus eight remixes originally unreleased including one from Leftfield.
All versions of ‘Maxinquaye (Reincarnated)’ come with brand new artwork containing a rare image of his late mother, of whom the album is named after. The image was recently discovered by Tricky’s cousin and is the only one that exists of him and her together.
With creative control on the project, Tricky started reworking tracks from the original album in 2022 which have never before been released and allow ‘Maxinquaye (Reincarnated)’ to be a natural evolution of the original release. “If you’re an artist or a musician and you look back at your old stuff,” he reasons, “if you don’t think it’s dated then you’re either stood still or you’re satisfied with what you’ve done.” “I hadn’t listened to it for years! And ‘Aftermath’ was the obvious one [track] to start with because that was my first release without any label. So it was like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to cover this.’ It’s almost like I just thought about that song and then ‘Aftermath
Reincarnated’ – just how it should have sounded to me now. So I redid it as it
should sound now. It’s not a cover, it’s a reminder.”
‘Maxinquaye’ remains one of the most groundbreaking records in British music history. Upon its release in 1995, it was met with resounding critical acclaim receiving near perfect scores from music critics across the board – Melody Maker deemed it “gripping, original, sublime”, NME said the record was “… unprecedented, spellbinding and revealed something new with every listen”, Q Magazine “… Tricky proves himself to be more challenging and eclectic than his peers”, Pitchfork “An unrepeatable record so unbelievably wrong it could only be right”… even David Bowie took it upon himself to write a letter to Tricky in the August of 1995 proclaiming “I’ve loved Maxinquaye for some time”. In more recent times The New York Times and Guardian have respectively said of it “… [an] album-length masterpiece” and “Time has not dimmed the impact of this extraordinary record”.
In its year of release, NME, Melody Maker and The Wire all named it their album of the year and it was nominated for a Mercury Prize (losing out to Portishead’s ‘Dummy’). It continues to be sited for its impact on music being a mainstay of “Greatest Albums Of All Time” lists such as NME’s 2013 list of the 500 greatest albums, Uncut Magazine’s 2016 200 Greatest Albums, Q Magazine’s 100 Greatest British albums, Mojo’s 100 Modern Classics, Rolling Stone’s ‘Essential Recordings of the 90s’ to name but a few.
