Maxinquaye
Maxinquaye | ||||
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Tricky chronology | ||||
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Singles from Maxinquaye | ||||
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Maxinquaye is the debut
With assistance from fellow producer Mark Saunders, Tricky used dub music techniques and heavily altered samples taken from a variety of sources to produce Maxinquaye. Its resulting groove-oriented downbeat, hazy and fragmented sound incorporates elements from hip hop, soul, rock, ambient techno, reggae and experimental music. Tricky's lyrics throughout the album explore themes of cultural decline, dysfunctional sexual relationships, fear of intimacy and recreational drug use, as he drew on his experiences in British drug culture and the influence of his late mother Maxine Quaye, after whom the album is titled.
Maxinquaye reached the number three position on the
Background
Following a troubled upbringing in the Knowle West neighbourhood of Bristol, Tricky joined the multimedia collective The Wild Bunch during the late 1980s.[1] As part of the collective, he helped arrange sound systems around Bristol's club scene, and performed under a stage name derived from "Tricky Kid", the nickname given to him in a street gang as a youth.[2] The Wild Bunch signed a record deal with 4th & B'way Records and released two singles, but their slow, experimental sound failed to make a commercial impact. The collective dissolved in 1989, which led to a few of its members forming the group Massive Attack. Tricky became a frequent collaborator who rapped over their productions, but quit after finding his role in the group to be limited;[3] he later reworked material he had written for Massive Attack on Maxinquaye.[4]
In 1993, Tricky met with Martina Topley-Bird, then a teenager at Clifton College, after he saw her sitting against a wall near his house singing to herself. "That's really how it happened", she recalled. "A few weeks later, I went around to his house with some friends. We'd been drinking cider after our GCSEs. We were banging on his door, but he wasn't in. Then Mark Stewart, who lived there, came up to us and said: 'Yeah, this is Tricky's house, jump in through the window.'"[5] Tricky's lyricism had matured from raps about street violence and sex to more personal and introspective writing, but Topley-Bird described his material for Maxinquaye as "quite depressing", which he believed was because of her more privileged background: "It's just reality. She's been a student all her life, grew up in Somerset, and I don't think she's ever faced the real world. She finds it all a bit weird. But she's my best mate."[3]
They formed a musical and romantic partnership over subsequent years, and they produced "Aftermath", which subsequently appears on Maxinquaye. After offering the song to Massive Attack, who were not interested in including it on their 1991 album Blue Lines, Tricky released "Aftermath" independently to local record stores in September 1993 before he signed a record deal with 4th & B'way.[6]
Recording and production
Tricky asked
The recording sessions were somewhat chaotic, and Saunders, who had the impression he would only perform engineering duties, often found himself serving as a
Tricky had no concept of pitch and no regard for
According to the American critic Robert Christgau, Maxinquaye's groove-oriented and low-tempo music drew not only on dub but also on lo-fi, ambient techno and hip hop, while James Hunter from Rolling Stone said Tricky subsumed American hip hop, soul, reggae and 1980s English rock sounds into "a mercurial style of dance music".[10] Entertainment Weekly's resident critic David Browne classified the music as an intellectual form of R&B.[11] Ben Walsh of The Independent called it an experimental album featuring a "heady blend" of soul, rock, punk, hip hop, dub and electronica.[12] In Tricky's own words, he composed his songs based on a particular sound he liked rather than having a definite song structure in mind: "I couldn't write you a blues track or a hip-hop track if you asked. I just make what I hear and then me and Martina sing all the words on paper, putting the emphasis on the things that perhaps shouldn't be sung."[3]
Almost all of Topley-Bird's vocals on Maxinquaye were recorded in a single take, a process she later said was "totally instinctive. There was no time to drum up an alter ego."
Themes
Much of the thematic content on Maxinquaye is informed by Tricky's late mother.
My first lyric ever on a song was "your eyes resemble mine, you'll see as no others can". I didn't have any kids then ... so what am I talking about? Who am I talking about? My mother ... used to write poetry but in her time she couldn't have done anything with that, there wasn't any opportunity. It's almost like she killed herself to give me the opportunity, my lyrics. I can never understand why I write as a female, I think I've got my mum's talent, I'm her vehicle. So I need a woman to sing that.[21]
It's this primal wound [his mother's death] that makes him an aerial tuned to the frequencies of anguish and dead emanating from the [drug] culture. Hollowlands, stranded limbos, aftermath zones, desert shores: Tricky's songs are the mindscapes of a generation that has lost the capacity to dream of "a better place." His music's nowhere vastness externalizes the inner void left when the utopian imagination withers and dies. And yet Maxinquaye's last song, the unspeakably beautiful "Feed Me," seems to hold out a cruel glimmer of hope – a dream of the promised land, or lost motherland (Maxinquaye itself?), a place "where we're taught to grow strong/Strongly sensitive." The song is tentative, almost taunting – like a mirage. "Unreal, yeah," Tricky mutters.
— Simon Reynolds (2013)[18]
While songs such as "Overcome" and "Suffocated Love" deal with themes of "sexual paranoia and male dread of intimacy", the rest of Maxinquaye explores the psychological tolls of British recreational drug culture, which Reynolds said once served as a "temporary utopia" for a generation of drug users who otherwise lacked a "constructive outlet for its idealism".[22] He also felt that the album's cover art, featuring rusting metal surfaces, represented the cultural decline explored in the music's themes.[23] Tricky drew on eschatological Rastafarian ideas of end times for the record, although unlike adherents to that movement, he did not disassociate himself from "Babylon" or the decadence of Western society; with lyrics such as "my brain thinks bomb-like/beware of our appetite" on "Hell Is Round the Corner", he said to Reynolds that "I'm part of this fuckin' psychic pollution ... It's like, I can be as greedy as you. The conditioned part of me says 'yeah, I'm gonna go out and make money, I'm going to rule my own little kingdom.'"[9] Christgau deemed the album's songs "audioramas of someone who's signed on to work for the wages of sin and lived to cash the check", while O'Hagan said Tricky's "impressionistic prose poems" were written from the deviant perspective of the urban hedonist: "Maxinquaye is the sound of blunted Britain, paranoid and obsessive ... This was the inner-city blues, Bristol style".[24]
The songs "Ponderosa", "Strugglin'" and "Hell Is Round the Corner" were inspired by Tricky's experiences with marijuana, alcohol, cocaine and ecstasy, particularly a two-year binge and consequent state of despondency while on Massive Attack's payroll after the completion of Blue Lines. His
Marketing and sales
After Tricky signed to 4th & B'way, the label reissued "Aftermath" in January 1994 and released "Ponderosa" in April to promote Maxinquaye.
4th & B'way relied on
Publicity photos and music videos promoting Maxinquaye featured Tricky and Topley-Bird utilising
Maxinquaye was released on 20 February 1995 and sold over 100,000 copies in its first few months in the UK, despite no significant radio airplay.
Critical reception and legacy
Aggregate scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [40] |
Entertainment Weekly | A[11] |
Mojo | [41] |
NME | 9/10[42] |
Pitchfork | 9.3/10[43] |
Q | [31] |
Rolling Stone | [44] |
Spin | 8/10[45] |
Maxinquaye received widespread acclaim from contemporary critics.[30] Reviewing in March 1995 for Mojo, Jon Savage called it a very ambitious and musically audacious work that brilliantly explored the disparities in Britain's social structure, with Topley-Bird as the "dominant voice" articulating Tricky's vision of uncertainty in an ever-changing world.[46] Dele Fadele from NME said the record was unprecedented, spellbinding and revealed something new with every listen. He found Tricky's production innovative and his fusion of various sounds so seamless, "you can't label the results under any existing genre".[42] David Bennun of Melody Maker deemed the album almost perfect and Tricky's music highly "gripping, original, sublime, his lyrics so abstruse and woven into the sound, that they become inseparable".[47] Maxinquaye's combination of "dreamlike ambient music and hip-hop bite" was praised by the Los Angeles Times critic Robert Hilburn for giving Tricky's "soundscapes about contemporary life such a seductive and provocative edge".[48] In Q magazine, Tom Doyle credited Topley-Bird's singing for making Maxinquaye "a highly inventive and intoxicating collection" while declaring that "with this debut, Tricky proves himself to be more challenging and eclectic than his peers".[49]
At the end of 1995, Maxinquaye was named the year's best record in critics polls conducted by several English publications, including NME, Melody Maker and The Wire.[50] It also finished second in the voting for the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics.[51] The record received a nomination for the 1995 Mercury Prize, an annual music award given to the best album from the UK and Ireland, losing out to Portishead's 1994 debut Dummy.[36]
Along with Massive Attack's Blue Lines, Maxinquaye was hailed by journalists as the pivotal release in what they were calling "trip hop" music; Jon Pareles, the chief critic at The New York Times, called it the genre's "first album-length masterpiece".[52] Tricky disliked the term, saying "I was supposed to have invented trip hop, and I will fucking deny having anything to do with it".[53] Writing years later for Stylus Magazine, Hebert argued that "there's too much here to be sequestered to any genre, let alone that one ... Calling Tricky 'trip-hop' is a bit like calling Prince 'pop'. It's partially accurate, but the music is so much better than that."[20] In Mojo, Victoria Segal later called Maxinquaye "an exotic, erotic alien that nobody (not least its creator) has managed to clone".[41] It was also dubbed "the British postmodern album of the 90s" by Jason Draper of Record Collector and "a visionary post-rock statement" by The Philadelphia Inquirer's Tom Moon, while AllMusic's senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine said it remains "a bracing sonic adventure that gains richness and resonance with each listen" because of the songs' imaginative structures and exceptional use of "noise and experimental music".[54] By the end of the 1990s, Christgau had come to view Maxinquaye as among the decade's most essential albums.[55] In The Village Voice, he wrote that its enduring significance lies in an aesthetic of cool derived from the blues and African-American culture, which valued a self-possessed resolve in the face of oppression:
What stands out isn't the dolor pop generalists noticed at the time, but the listenability that induced them to bother: Martina's pervasive lyricism, beats that are buoyant at any speed, a profusion of sweet-tempered [keyboard] effects that signify melody, harmony, strings. It's still pretty morose, sure. But nothing in its bitter passivity and contained rage comes off as a defeat or a sham ... Maxinquaye had that kind of cool. With blues replications per se having worn out their formal gris-gris, it voiced and embraced a grim new resignation about freedom, power, race and human connection in the postwelfare state – and simultaneously counteracted it.[56]
Maxinquaye has frequently appeared on authoritative lists of the greatest albums, including
Track listing
No. | Title | Producer(s) | Length |
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1. | " Tricky | 4:30 | |
2. | "Ponderosa" | Howie B, Tricky | 3:31 |
3. | "Black Steel" | Saunders, Tricky | 5:40 |
4. | "Hell Is Round the Corner" | Saunders, Tricky | 3:47 |
5. | "Pumpkin" | Tricky | 4:31 |
6. | "Aftermath" | Kevin Petrie, Tricky | 7:39 |
7. | "Abbaon Fat Tracks" | Tricky | 4:27 |
8. | "Brand New You're Retro" | Saunders, Tricky | 2:54 |
9. | "Suffocated Love" | Saunders, Tricky | 4:53 |
10. | "You Don't" | Saunders, Tricky | 4:39 |
11. | "Strugglin'" | Saunders, Tricky | 6:39 |
12. | "Feed Me" | Saunders, Tricky | 4:04 |
Notes
- All songs were written and composed by Tricky, except "Ponderosa" (Tricky and Howie B) and "Black Steel" (Hank Shocklee).[16]
- All vocals were performed by Tricky and Martina Topley-Bird, except on "Pumpkin" (Tricky and Alison Goldfrapp) and "You Don't" (Tricky and Ragga).[16]
Personnel
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[16]
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Charts
Weekly charts
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Year-end charts
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Certifications
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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United Kingdom (BPI)[74] | Gold | 100,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. |
See also
References
- ^ Shields 2003, p. 1101; Pride 1995, p. 80.
- ^ Strong 2006, p. 1118; Shields 2003, p. 1101.
- ^ a b c Kessler 1995, pp. 12–13.
- ^ a b Pride 1995, p. 80; Erlewine(a) n.d..
- ^ Fox 2010, p. 5.
- ^ Shields 2003, p. 1109; Pride 1995, p. 80.
- ^ a b c d e f Buskin 2007.
- ^ Buskin 2007; Byers 2008.
- ^ a b Reynolds 2013, p. 332.
- ^ Christgau 1995a; Hunter 1995, p. 83.
- ^ a b Browne 1995, p. 56.
- ^ Walsh 2012.
- ^ a b Lynskey 2012.
- ^ Reynolds 1995.
- ^ O'Hagan 2004.
- ^ a b c d Anon. 1995.
- ^ Buskin 2007; Bennun 2015.
- ^ a b c Reynolds 2013, p. 333.
- ^ Kot 1995.
- ^ a b Hebert 2003.
- ^ Fisher 2008.
- ^ Reynolds 2013, p. 330.
- ^ a b Reynolds 2013, p. 331.
- ^ Christgau 1995b; O'Hagan 2004.
- ^ Reynolds 1995; Reynolds 2013, pp. 330–31.
- ^ Reynolds 2013, pp. 330–31.
- ^ Reynolds 2013, p. 331; Bennun 2015.
- ^ Pride 1995, p. 80; Strong 2006, p. 1119.
- ^ Strong 2006, p. 1119.
- ^ a b Pride 1995, p. 80.
- ^ a b Howe 2009, p. 132.
- ^ Weheliye 2005, p. 254.
- ^ Anon.(d) n.d.
- ^ Flick 1995, p. 49.
- ^ Paoletta 2003, p. 41.
- ^ a b c Anon. 2012.
- ^ Anon.(c) n.d.
- ^ Erlewine(b) n.d.
- ^ Christgau 2000, pp. 314–15.
- ^ Larkin 2011, p. 3535.
- ^ a b Segal 2009, p. 109.
- ^ a b Fadele 1995, p. 48.
- ^ Cardew, Ben (27 March 2022). "Tricky: Maxinquaye Album Review | Pitchfork". Pitchfork. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
- ^ Hunter 1995, p. 83.
- ^ Walters 1995, p. 99.
- ^ Savage 1995, p. 16.
- ^ Bennun 1995, p. 34.
- ^ Hilburn 1995.
- ^ Doyle 1995, p. 104.
- ^ Erlewine(a) n.d.; Balazard et al. 1996.
- ^ Anon. 1996.
- ^ Larkin 2011, p. 1207; Pareles 1996.
- ^ Cohen & Krugman 1996; Bennun 2015.
- ^ Draper 2009; Moon 2001; Erlewine(b) n.d..
- ^ Allen 2000.
- ^ Christgau 1998.
- ^ McKeating 2003; Kaye 2013.
- ^ Anon. 2016.
- ^ Anon. 2003.
- ^ Cinquemani 2002a.
- ^ Cinquemani 2002b.
- ^ Twells & Finton 2015.
- ^ Rayner 2010, p. 755.
- ^ "Australiancharts.com – Tricky – Maxinquaye". Hung Medien. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "Ultratop.be – Tricky – Maxinquaye" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "Ultratop.be – Tricky – Maxinquaye" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "Dutchcharts.nl – Tricky – Maxinquaye" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "Charts.nz – Tricky – Maxinquaye". Hung Medien. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "Swedishcharts.com – Tricky – Maxinquaye". Hung Medien. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "End of Year Album Chart Top 100 – 1995". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
- ^ "British album certifications – Tricky – Maxinquaye". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
Bibliography
- Allen, Jamie (9 November 2000). "Music critic Christgau delivers new guide to consumers". CNN.com. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
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- Anon. (20 February 1996). "The 1995 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
- Anon. (17 November 2003). "Top 100 Albums of the 1990s". Pitchfork. p. 4. Retrieved 24 December 2016.
- Anon. (28 February 2012). "Tricky and Martina Topley-Bird to Perform for First Time in 15 Years at Sundance London". Music Week. London. Retrieved 17 September 2014. (subscription required)
- Anon. (February 2016). "200 Greatest Albums of All Time". Uncut. No. 225. London. p. 37.
- Anon.[b] (n.d.). "Tricky - Maxinquaye - Reviews". Album of the Year. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
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- Anon.[d] (n.d.). "Tricky". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 19 February 2018.
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- Balazard, Sylvestre; Barnes, Jake; Barnes, Mike; Bell, Clive; et al. (January 1996). "Blessed Releases: Records of the Year". The Wire (143). London: 32 – via Exact Editions. (subscription required)
- Bennun, David (4 February 1995). "Tricky: Maxinquaye". Melody Maker. London.
- Bennun, David (20 February 2015). "20 Years On: Tricky's Maxinquaye Revisited". The Quietus. Archived from the original on 24 February 2016. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
- Browne, David (2 June 1995). "Maxinquaye". Entertainment Weekly. New York. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- Buskin, Richard (June 2007). "Classic Tracks: Tricky 'Black Steel'". Sound on Sound. Cambridge. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
- Byers, Will (10 September 2008). "School of Rock: The Power of Production". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
- Christgau, Robert (March 1995). "Tricky, John Prine, Dance Hits U.K." Playboy. Chicago. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
- Christgau, Robert (6 June 1995). "Consumer Guide". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
- Christgau, Robert (9 June 1998). "Thwocks and Whispers". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
- Christgau, Robert (2000). "CG Book '90s: T". ISBN 0312245602. Retrieved 30 March 2019 – via robertchristgau.com.
- Cinquemani, Sal (30 June 2002a). "2520: The 25 Greatest Electronic Albums of the 20th Century". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
- Cinquemani, Sal (2 November 2002b). "Tricky: Maxinquaye". Slant Magazine. Archived from the original on 15 December 2008. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- Cohen, Jason; Krugman, Michael (October 1996). "The Madness of King Tricky I". Ray Gun. Santa Monica. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
- Doyle, Tom (March 1995). "Tricky: Maxinquaye". Q (102). London.
- Draper, Jason (2009). "Tricky – Maxinquaye: Deluxe Edition". Record Collector (370). London. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
- Erlewine, Stephen Thomas [a] (n.d.). "Tricky". AllMusic. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
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- Fadele, Dele (18 February 1995). "The Severn Alliance". NME. London. Retrieved 31 March 2016.
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- Flick, Larry (13 May 1995). "Island Records Makes Waves on the Dancefloor". Billboard. 107 (19). New York.
- Fox, Killian (11 July 2010). "Martina Topley Bird: 'I played Boggle till 4am the Other Night. Is That Rock'n'roll Enough for You?'". The Observer. London. The New Review section. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
- Hebert, Kenan (1 September 2003). "Tricky – Maxinquaye – On Second Thought". Stylus Magazine. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 27 November 2015.
- Hilburn, Robert (31 December 1995). "Year in Review 1995". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
- Howe, Rupert (December 2009). "Tricky: Maxinquaye". Q (281). London.
- Hunter, James (15 June 1995). "Tricky: Maxinquaye". Rolling Stone. New York. Archived from the original on 29 May 2009. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
- Kaye, Ben (25 October 2013). "The Top 500 Albums of All Time, according to NME". Consequence of Sound. Archivedfrom the original on 26 August 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- Kessler, Ted (14 January 1995). "Tricky Up Your Ears". NME. London.
- Kot, Greg (15 September 1995). "Shoot From the Hip-Hop". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 5 December 2015.
- ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
- Lynskey, Dorian (20 March 2012). "Tricky: 'I Thought I'd Be an Underground Artist. I Was Not Ready'". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
- McKeating, Scott (8 December 2003). "Tricky: An Incredible Weed Smoking, Trip-Hop Denying, Paranoid, Schizophrenic World". Stylus Magazine. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
- Moon, Tom (29 June 2001). "Tricky Does The Trick With Agile And Versatile 'Blowback'". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 15 December 2016.
- O'Hagan, Sean (20 June 2004). "60 Maxinquaye, Tricky". The Observer. London. The 100 Greatest British Albums. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
- Paoletta, Michael (31 May 2003). "After Uneven Sales, Tricky Exposes 'Vulnerable' Side". Billboard. 115 (22). New York.
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- Pride, Dominic (15 April 1995). "Trip-Hop Steps Out". Billboard. 107 (15). New York.
- Rayner, Alex (2010). "Maxinquaye". In Dimery, Robert (ed.). ISBN 978-0-7893-2074-2.
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- Reynolds, Simon (2013). "Sounds of Paranoia: Trip Hop, Tricky and Pre-Millennium Tension, 1990–97". Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture. ISBN 978-1-136-78317-3.
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- Segal, Victoria (December 2009). "Tricky: Maxinquaye". Mojo (193). London.
- Shields, Andy (2003). "Tricky". In Buckley, Peter (ed.). The Rough Guide to Rock. ISBN 1-84353-105-4.
- ISBN 1-84195-860-3.
- Twells, John; Finton, Laurent (30 July 2015). "The 50 best trip-hop albums of all time". Fact. London. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
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- Walters, Barry (June 1995). "Spins". Spin. 11 (3). New York.
- Weheliye, Alexander G. (2005). Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. ISBN 0822386933.
Further reading
- Christgau, Robert (27 June 1995). "Staying Alive: Tricky, Moby, M People". The Village Voice. New York.
- Johnson, Martin (15 June 1995). "Maxinquaye (4th & Broadway)". Chicago Tribune.
External links
- Maxinquaye at Discogs (list of releases)