By Dabrowka Nowak, Third Year English
Being within the Bristol music scene, chances are you’ve heard of Tricky, the genre-defining trip hop artist who soundtracked the 90s and kickstarted Massive Attack. And now, the icon is set to return to Bristol for a rare performance.
On the 17th of May 2026, along with special guest and collaborator, Polish artist Marta Złakowska (‘Marta’), Tricky is set to play Bristol Beacon as part of a three-location UK tour. Bristol Beacon promises a ‘striking visual design’ and ‘powerful live experience’. As the 2023-renovated venue aims to explore the richness and complexity of Bristol’s music scene artists, Bristol’s most iconic will bring with him a stunning display of his own life played out in music.
Tricky was born in 1968 in Bristol’s Knowle West, a predominantly white, impoverished area, as Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws. His earliest roots were in music, as his father ran the popular Studio 17 Soundsystem. The then-nicknamed ‘Tricky Kid’ joined the Wild Bunch sound system, a collection of DJs from the St Pauls region alongside 3D, Mushroom and Daddy G, soon developing into Massive Attack.
The famed Blue Lines, featuring the likes of Horace Andy and Shara Nelson, kickstarted Massive Attack’s success in 1991. The group’s genius is uncovered through their journey of winding and returning motifs and melodies. It is an album defined by almost psychedelic lyrical and thematic musical pattern-making, hence: trip-hop.
Even as the soul/hip-hop album reached thirteen on UK charts and swept up awards throughout the decade, the group stayed true to their roots, bringing to the mainstream the Knowle West life of ‘warehouse parties, trip hop and smoking drugs’, such as in a collaboration from the original Wild Bunch in ‘Five Man Army’.
Massive Attack continued without Tricky from here on out, yet he still appears in various tracks from time to time, such as ‘Karmacoma’ (Protection) and ‘Take It There’ (Ritual Spirit).
Tricky left Massive Attack to pursue a solo career after a contract offer with Island Records. The result was Maxinquaye (1995), a dark, sensual album with creeping, driving beats, haunting female vocals from the young Martina Topley-Bird and a perfect display of Tricky’s composed, atmospheric flow.
Widely recognisable, the single ‘Hell Is Round the Corner’ samples Isaac Hayes’ ‘Ike’s Rap II’, also heard in other Bristol trip hop legends Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’, as well as making its way into youth and internet culture by appearing in a problematically famous scene from the first season of Skins.
Maxinquaye is named after Tricky’s mother, who committed suicide when Tricky was four, as the artist describes having two souls in an interview with The Wire: ‘I have my mum’s talent, I’m her vehicle.’
Following this, notable is the impact of women on Tricky’s life and career. ‘I’ve a kinship with women,’ he says to The Guardian. ‘That’s why I’ve always put women in strong positions in music.’ Aside from centring Martina Topley-Bird, Marta and his mother, Tricky has collaborated with and taken inspiration from many female pop culture icons.
He praises Blondie in an interview with The Wire, stating, ‘I don’t think people write [pop] as good as Blondie did,’ in an example of his appraisals of a female artist in a genre far removed from his own. Nearly God (1996) boasts features with Björk, with whom the artist shared a relationship.
The ‘unofficial’ album opens with a cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Tattoo’, a trance, ambient interpretation of the goth B-side, another genre for Tricky to have interacted deeply with. PJ Harvey appears on ‘Broken Homes’ from Angels With Dirty Faces (1998), where her usual beguiling darkness provides a foreground for Tricky’s seductive, tonally rich whispering echoes and Topley-Bird’s choral harmonies. ‘I write as a female,’ (The Wire) claims Tricky.
Tricky’s other works and collaborations include the dreamy, occasionally downtempo Pre-Millennium Tension (1996) and ununiform (2017), which features a cover of Hole’s ‘Doll Parts’, another example of genre fusion and feminine inspiration. The collab Tricky Meets South Rakkas Crew adds electronic dance to his genre repertoire.
Knowle West Boy (2008) employs instrumental rock and electronica, whilst the track ‘Council Estate’ pays direct homage to Tricky’s upbringing in Knowle West and brief spell in prison with fast-paced hip hop, an ode to his sound system days. Around this time, Tricky also briefly founded and ran the Brown Punk label to support working-class artists, forever returning to his roots.
If any more convincing is needed of the extent and reach of Tricky’s talent, a popular cultural anecdote describes how David Bowie himself gifted the artist with a Basquiat book and wrote him a ‘lovely letter’ (Far Out Magazine). For an artist never set on fame, Tricky has reached and united souls everywhere.
To move back to the present day, these upcoming UK performances follow several released albums between Marta and Tricky. Their collaboration began after Marta opted in to play live with him last minute in 2017.
Since then, they have released When It’s Going Wrong (2023) and the new Out The Way (2025). Here, Marta’s quiet, complex melodies over Tricky’s classic dark, crisply produced beats create a soundscape for a modern era of pop-leaning electronic music, but with evident, identifiable trip-hop elements.
Eden Chambers
The show at Bristol Beacon is destined to be spectacular. Tricky has defined the so-called Bristol Sound, crafted trip-hop, and brought to light the talents of many other artists. He is genre-blending, defying, defining, with only ever having the aim of ‘[saying] that some good stuff can come out of Knowle West’ (The Wire). And he inspirationally proves time and time again that it indeed can.
Featured Image: Album cover of Tricky’s Maxinquaye © 1995, 4th & B’way Records. Used for editorial purposes.What's your favourite Tricky song?
