Tricky [Blowback Presskit]

TRICKY is back. Not in that simplistic way record companies routinely claim when all they are trying to tell you is that an artist has made a new album or is embarking on another tour. But back as in really back. Back from the dark and uncomfortable places his life has visited in recent years. Back in his own skin again, more confident and focused and creative than in a long time. And back with the album which, by his own admission, he should have made as the follow up to 1995's acclaimed Maxinquaye - one of the defining and most influential records of the past decade. "I know people have been waiting for me to make this album," he says. "But I was like 'fuck off, I’m not giving people what they want.' All my other albums since Maxinquaye were saying 'fuck you'. I was making records deliberately so they wouldn't get on the radio. It was 'fuck everything - whatever you like I'm going to make the opposite kind of album.'"

Now with Blowback, in stores June 26, Tricky, has finally made the record his fans have long wanted. “And I want this album to be on the radio," he says. "I want to be on MTV and VH1. My life's changed for the better. The paranoia has gone. I've got my energy back and this album is about opening up and communicating with people again." The route Tricky has taken from Maxinquaye to Blowback is a remarkable - and at times scary - journey. He admits in recent years he was making music "on the verge of insanity" and was close to being hospitalised. Then a chance recommendation to a new doctor a little over a year ago led to a change of diet which literally changed his life. The remarkable results of this turn-around can be heard on Blowback, his most open, accessible and, yes, downright commercial album in six years.

Born in Bristol, Tricky first came to prominence as a guest vocalist on Massive Attack's Blue Lines and the group's follow-up, Protection. Signed to a solo deal with Island, his debut album Maxinquaye was released in 1995 and its unique fusion of rap, rock and r&b helped to define the sound that came to be known as trip-hop. The album was in places dark, obsessive and unsettling. But it was also inventive, audacious and thrilling and was immediately hailed by the critics as a masterpiece. It made the top three of the British album charts and was one of those watershed albums that influences everything that comes after. It was a record that, quite literally, changed the face of British music and was hailed by Rolling Stone as "revolutionalizing the trip-hop genre".

The Nearly God EP followed in 1996 which featured Damon Albarn, Bjork and Neneh Cherry and the same year saw the release of his third album, Pre-Millennium Tension, recorded in Jamaica. Tricky was in prolific form and both albums contained some fine music. But they were far less accessible records. The dark obsession was beginning to sound like claustrophobic paranoia. The albums were full of "head games" as Tricky now succinctly puts it. Angels with Dirty Faces in 1998 was a further step down that road, many of the songs reflecting his deep unhappiness with the recording industry. It was followed by Juxtapose, his last album for Island, in 1999. "It's astonishing how dark your life can get without you even noticing," Tricky says in recalling those days. "It slips and slips further away. You think it's just stress so you push on. And that gets you get into even worse situations and you slide further. Profoundly unhappy with his business set-up, he changed management and changed record labels. He found a new home with Hollywood Records and his new manager is none other than Chris Blackwell, the former Island boss who originally signed him to the label in the mid-nineties. The new Tricky is a happier, more relaxed individual. There are still dark textures in his music but the change for the better in his life is reflected on Blowback. "My life has gone full circle," he says. "I had a lot of problems - depression, mood swings, temper tantrums. Someone would get my room service order wrong and I'd smash up the room. I've had a mad couple of years and the people around me have found it very difficult. But I've finally got my life back and that's what Blowback is all about..." Much of Tricky's best work has been made in collaboration, whether it was with Martina, his ever-present muse on the early albums, Bjork, whose album Post he partly produced or Garbage, with whom he had a top ten hit with Milk in 1996. On Blowback he works with an even more eclectic range of artists, including Ed Kowalczyk, the singer with the band Live, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morissette, Ambersunshower, Cyndi Lauper, who he describes as "one of the greatest singers I've ever heard." Then there's Hawkman, a young Jamaican friend from New York, where Tricky now lives. "Hawk's real ghetto and when he picks up a mic he tears it up. He's up for anything," Tricky says. "I hang out with him all the time. My life's become very normal after all the mad years. We drive around the Bronx in a little old Toyota and I go round his place and chat on the mic... That's how I started. Just a little system in someone's house. I haven't done that since I was about 16. It's back to street level."

The result is an album full of contrasts and surprises. The excitement and the imagination and the sheer audacity that made Maxinquaye such a ground-breaking record are back. "When I made that first album I had a dream of changing the world," Tricky says. "You realise after a couple of years you aren't going to do that and its all a load of bullshit. Which is OK and you carry on. But now I've got my dream back. Music has stood still or five years and it's time to change it around again." It's good to have Tricky back. In every sense of the word.