People have something more tangible to relate the music to and it gives us the chance to connect with the audience.” Evelyn saw this as a necessary development for Nightmares On Wax’s continued growth: “Doing the live side proves there is more to the music. This evolutionary step in their music making marked a move towards something that resembled a traditional band set-up a major shift for a project that had begun life as an extension of DJ-ing. Listen: Nightmares On Wax ‘Carboot Soul’ Musical Lead Up Playlist

The album’s cast of musicians also included Chris Dawkins on guitar, Hamlet Luton on bass, and soul singer Sara Winton, whilst orchestral arrangements were handled by the Pure Strings Orchestra. Robin Taylor-Frith’s dexterous performances are again used throughout the album, notably on tracks such as the opener ‘Les Nuits’, in which his staccato keyboard is offset by a velveteen bed of cinematic strings. Following his second album, Smokers Delight, Evelyn had been inspired to incorporate more live instrumentation into their music, building from an initial keys and beats base towards something that resembled a small symphony of both sampled and performed sound. There was a soulful classicism that remained in the Nightmares on Wax sound, extending its life beyond the decline of the genre it helped establish. Nonetheless, by the turn of the century trip hop’s troubled worldview had largely fallen out of favour with mainstream listeners, who were far more receptive to the hyperactive sound of acts such as Basement Jaxx. Massive Attack and Tricky had harnessed this apprehension on their respective masterpieces, Mezzanine and Pre Millennium Tension, which pushed against the prevailing mood of Brit-Pop and New Labour’s sunny optimism with a crepuscular mood that suggested trouble was lurking behind false promises. 1999 marked a year of unprecedented change, as the world prepared to enter a new millennium, and both the push for and fear of change manifested in public hysteria such as Y2K. Carboot Soul, the third Nightmares On Wax album, resisted the urge to go bigger and bolder.

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