Tricky Brings Three Decades of Beautiful Unease to Trees
Tricky is still reshaping what “Trip-Hop” means, long after everyone thought they had agreed on what it was supposed to be.
– JAMBALOO EDITORIAL TEAM
The Bristol musician first emerged through his work with Massive Attack, but it was his 1995 debut, Maxinquaye, that established him as something far stranger than a producer or rapper stepping out on his own. Built from murmured vocals, distorted samples, dub, soul, hip-hop and the extraordinary presence of Martina Topley-Bird, the album felt intimate and claustrophobic at the same time. It became one of the defining records of the decade without offering anyone a reliable blueprint for what Tricky might do next.
Thirty-one years later, he remains difficult to pin down.
On Sunday, September 20, Tricky returns to North America for a performance at Trees in Deep Ellum. The Dallas date arrives near the beginning of a fall run supporting Different When It’s Silent, his 15th studio album and his first full-length release under the Tricky name in six years.
Released July 17 through his False Idols label, Different When It’s Silent finds Tricky reconnecting with the shadowy musical language that made his earliest work so distinctive without attempting to recreate it.
Recorded between his home in France and sessions in Bristol, the album moves through skeletal blues, fractured electronics, distorted guitars and stripped-back hip-hop rhythms. Bristol vocalist Mitch Sanders appears throughout the record, while longtime collaborator Marta Złakowska joins Tricky on the closing track, Out Of Place.
Złakowska will also provide support throughout the North American tour. Her creative relationship with Tricky has grown across several projects, including 2025’s collaborative album Out The Way, and her restrained delivery has become an increasingly important counterweight to his weathered, restless voice.
That tension has always been central to Tricky’s best music. His songs can feel delicate without ever becoming comfortable, sensual without becoming welcoming. Voices disappear into the production. Beats arrive slightly damaged. Familiar musical ideas are pulled apart and rebuilt until they feel private, unstable and entirely his own.
A room like Trees should place that tension exactly where it belongs: directly in front of the audience, without much distance or decoration. The performance offers a chance to hear material from a record that had been released barely two months earlier, alongside music from a catalog that has spent three decades slipping between hip-hop, electronic music, post-punk, dub and soul.
Tricky has never sounded particularly comfortable in daylight. Trees should suit him just fine.
