TRICKY

About Tricky: 

Different When It’s Silent is the first Tricky album in six years, and with good reason. 

Since 2020’s Fall to Pieces the musician has released an album, and accompanying self-directed film, under the name Lonely Guest, an all-star 2021 project that included contributions from Oh Land, Marta Złakowska, Idles’ Joe Talbot, Murkage Dave, Maxïmo Park’s Paul Smith and, in one of his final appearances on record, Lee “Scratch” Perry. Three years later came Fifteen Days, a collaborative album from the artist born Adrian Thaws and producer Mike Theis, under the name Theis Thaws. Then, last year, he and Marta released joint album, Out The Way. All of those projects came out via False Idols, the label he founded in 2013. You can’t say Tricky’s not been busy.

But Different When It’s Silent is the first Tricky album in six years with bad reason, too. In 2019 his daughter died suddenly. 

“To be honest with you, since my daughter died, I want to work,” Tricky begins, “I want to do stuff. But all the press, being on camera, everything just changed when she died. I’ve never been a pop star as such but: that made me even more want to go in the background.”

Pointing to Fall to Pieces, released the year after her passing, he says that “I was in pieces when I made that album. It was almost like I had to get that out of me. And then after that, I was more worried about Marta’s album or the label. So, I wouldn’t say I was reluctant to release music under my own name. But I wasn’t that interested, to be honest. I didn’t have the motivation. Releasing an album under your name, you got to do certain stuff. I can bring out a side-project with no press, no photographs, no videos, no tour, nothing at all. It’s easy.”

Then, in 2025, Tricky’s new manager Alan McGee heard the songs the Bristolian had been working on at his new home in France and in the studio in Bristol. In Tricky’s mind, this was to be another side-project. “Then Alan come to my house and I played it to him. He goes: ‘Mate, this is a Tricky album. This is the best thing since Maxinquaye. This has got to be a Tricky album.’ It was Alan who convinced me to put it out as a Tricky album.”