Tricky - Ununiform

The strangest, least familiar thing Tricky has ever found in his music is peace. ununiform, his 13th studio album, released September 22, 2017 on his own False Idols label, is the record that proves it, a delicate, storming, and deeply personal work from an artist who moved to Berlin three years earlier for a clean break in every sense of the word. No drinking. Early nights. Bike rides. Russian food in Moscow at Christmas. The music that emerged from this unexpectedly quiet life is some of the most focused and emotionally open he has made in two decades.

Recorded primarily in Berlin with four tracks made during three winter weeks in Moscow, the album confronts legacy, family, history, and death with the same claustrophobic atmosphere and stark bass lines that have always defined Tricky's world, while carrying a new and genuine sense of contentment underneath all of it. The collaborator list spans the globe: Francesca Belmonte returns on the slinky standout "New Stole," a reworking of a track from her own Tricky-produced album. Kazakh rapper Scriptonite and Russian MC Smoky Mo bring the Moscow sessions to life on "It's Your Day," "Blood Of My Blood," and "Bang Boogie." Asia Argento appears on the haunting "Wait For Signal." Terra Lopez brings electro-pop confidence to "Armor." A sparse, ghostly cover of Hole's "Doll Parts" features Avalon Lurks. Lead single "The Only Way," one of only two tracks with no guest vocalist, finds Tricky explicitly referencing his own past, describing it as "Hell Is Round The Corner Part 2," a signal that he has finally made his peace with the Maxinquaye era and the shadow it casts.

The album closes with its finest moment. Martina Topley-Bird, the voice at the heart of Maxinquaye and missing from Tricky's work for fourteen years, returns for "When We Die," a gorgeous and gloomy meditation on mortality that stands with anything in his catalog. Her presence casts the entire album in a warmer light. This is Tricky making music for the love of it, and it shows in every track.