'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 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.
‘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.”
‘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”, NMEsaid 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.
