Tricky: Pre-Millennium Tension

Don't push me, 'cause I'm close to the edge," a stressed-out Tricky growls on Pre-Millennium Tension's opener, "Vent," as sinister, backwards-sounding guitars gurgle and convulse around him. Drum loops sputter, while chanteuse/sometime girlfriend Martine Topley-Bird repeatedly wails, "Can't hardly breathe/Can't hardly sleep" from someplace far off. Like Grandmaster Flash, whose famous lyric he cops, Britain's Adrian "Tricky" Thaws isn't feeling too well as he sits on the edge of the 21st century: Fuzzed-out and garbled, disorienting and paranoid, Pre-Milennium Tension is the sound of sickness, coming on like a What's Going On for the era of Microsoft and AIDS. Like last year's Maxinquaye, the new album is less a collection of songs than its own alternate universe, only in this place the winds blow quite a bit colder. (Song titles include "Bad Dream," "My Evil Is Strong" and "Makes Me Wanna Die.") Musically, it's even tougher and more varied than Maxinquaye—there's substantially more hip-hop here, including a slamming cover of Eric B. and Rakim's "Lyrics of Fury," and wicked reggae basslines also work their way into the mix throughout. On "Tricky Kid," over a heap of churning noise he whispers/raps menacingly, "I tell you everything/I tell you lies/Look deep into my mongrel eyes." Listen closely, Trent Reznor: This is what scary music is supposed to sound like.