Studio K7
2004
Retrospective
About This Album
Retrospective is a necessary, if far from exhaustive, compilation of Rob Smith and Ray Mighty's production work -- whether released as Smith & Mighty or under the name of the group or artist the duo worked with. In addition to A-sides, there are B-sides and rarities, so it's not necessarily the best representation one could imagine. There are some key moments in the development and saturation of trip-hop. Roughly half the tracks come from 1995 and later, when the two began to run out of ideas and had long been surpassed creatively and commercially by those who began swimming in their wake -- Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead. The meat of the disc is in the tracks from the late '80s and early '90s, such as Fresh 4's "Funky Drummer"-assisted cover of Rose Royce's "Wishing On a Star" (a 1989 Top Ten hit in the U.K.), the spare Jackie Jackson-fronted cover of Bacharach/David's "Walk On By," and Carlton's "Come On Back." This last track, released in 1990, was an ideal midpoint between the duo's earliest raw work and the slickened sound of their mid-'90s releases -- hardly as rough-sounding as the early house tracks from Chicago and yet not nearly as shiny as a Soul II Soul or Lisa Stansfield single. As the later tracks play, it becomes apparent that the producers began following -- rather than setting -- the trends. Witness the drum'n'bass-based tracks, though the set-closing "Same" shows that not all of the greatness had been drained from them. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,5,7,8 and 11)

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