Adrian Thaws, aka Bristol's trip-hop king Tricky, has returned to his rough-hewn roots for a new album. Thirteen years on from his genre-bending debut Maxinquaye, Jim Carrollmeets an older, wiser but no less punchy star

A FEW weeks ago, Tricky went home. He grew up on the sprawling, neglected mean streets of Knowle West in Bristol and he wanted to show some people around the old patch.

Nothing has really changed there, says Tricky. It's still a poor, largely white ghetto full of folks whose people originally came from Ireland and Scotland hoping for a better life. It's still full of hard chaws who'd start a scrap if you looked at them the wrong way. There are some new top boys running things; Tricky recognised some of them from the old days when they were all urchins together.

But Adrian Thaws got out of all that a long time ago. He took on the world. Became a contender. Made some amazing music. Made some not-quite-so amazing music. Had some victories. Took some blows. Survived. Survival is important when you're Tricky.

Today, in a hotel room in London, Tricky is shouting. No worries; you've learned over the years that Tricky always shouts when he wants to get his point across. The best thing to do is just shut up and listen.

He's called his new album Knowle West Boybecause it's all about coming home. Five years after his last album, Vulnerable, and 13 years after he made his grand entrance with Maxinquaye, Tricky has finally clicked what being Tricky is all about. This is the sound of Tricky falling back into step with the music and moods of his youth. It's music for those people who were inspired by The Specials and hip-hop and punk.

Most of all, though, it's for Tricky. It's him proving that he can still cut it.

"A few years ago, when I was living in LA, I was going to Laguna Beach a lot to visit a friend of mine," he recalls. "I'd listen to the radio on the way over there in the car and realise I was better than what I was hearing. I was better than those guys, but they got all the hype and the bullshit. Most of them had only two good songs and a lot of junk on their albums. That irked me, man."

Yet Tricky stayed out of the game. He hung out in Brooklyn and LA, perfecting the act of being anonymous. "I started hanging out in places where no one gave a fuck about me and I realised I could be happy without all the fame and recognition. I didn't have to be on; I could be myself."

Being Tricky, though, involved making music. He'd lie in bed have a smoke, listen to Kate Bush and think he'd love to write something as good as Eat the Music. The time had come to go back to work.

"I turned 40 in January and I don't know when this is going to be over for me, so I have to work hard. In this fickle industry, another Tricky could come along next week and no one would be interested in me anymore. You have to be realistic ­- it is going to come to an end, whether it's death or people not caring any more."

In Tricky's case, his saviour was Laurence Bell at Domino Records, a hook-up suggested by former Island boss Chris Blackwell. Tricky and Bell met, talked and decided they could do business together. Bernard Butler was hired to record the album, but that didn't work out.

"Butler is a real prick," insists Tricky. "If I wasn't a musician and it was any normal circumstance, I'd have slapped him. He's very arrogant. I sat there and kept my mouth shut, knowing this wasn't going to work. I eventually said to Laurence that this guy was a fucking idiot and that was the end of that. It's never going to happen again."

In the old days, Tricky wouldn't have been so restrained. "Yeah, I'd have caused a scene. But I'm older now and it was Laurence's idea and I wanted to be honourable to him. It's a new relationship; you have to approach it gently. Domino are still getting used to me.

"I did what I was told to do and looked at it as a chance to come over to see my family and hang out with friends and do a bit of work. But I don't really know what Laurence was thinking, putting me in a studio with Bernard Butler."

He still finds that his reputation precedes him at every turn. He's supposed to be dark and broody, a troublemaker, a man with demons on both shoulders and a few on his back. He shrieks with laughter at this. Tricky? Dark? Moody?

"Sometimes, you might have just got off a plane and, of course, you're going to be dark and broody after a 12-hour flight. My cat could have fucking died last night. Anything could have happened, and how are people suppose to know that?

"I'm straight-up with people. I did an interview on the phone with someone last week. He was being a dick to me so I put the phone down on him. Fuck that. I'm not going to be pretentious and two-faced to get a good review. But that's the kind of thing which gets you a rep in this business. If someone is cool to me, I'll be cool to them."

Tricky is now back in the UK after 17 years living in the US. "LA is a great place, but it's hard to jump on a plane whenever I want to go see my cousin or my grandmother. She's 86 and she doesn't have long to go.

"It's not England any more," he adds. "To me, its like America. There's none of that distinctive identity you get in Scotland or Ireland. Everything is uniform. The kids wear hoodies and trainers and baggy jeans. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's American and I'm not going to walk around like some Yankee boy. My brother doesn't take off his baseball cap. It stays on his head. I was with him for two weeks and I didn't see his head once."

Then, there's the knife culture. Earlier, he was shaking his head at a TV news report about another kid stabbed to death on a London street.

"When I was a kid, it was fist-fighting, but now it's knives. Back in my neighbourhood, criminality was for criminals. If you had beef with someone, you used your fists to settle the score. It was criminals who used knives and guns. Now everybody is a heavy, walking around armed to the teeth. Fights don't end, because people keep coming back again and again. The badge of honour now is violence.

"Everything is about being a bad man, which is why kids are hanging out with the local hard men. It's stupid."

Music got Tricky out of that scene when he hooked up with DJ Milo, the Wild Bunch and Massive Attack. The rest is a history lesson with a fabulous soundtrack.

He has mixed feelings about running with those crews. He felt like an outsider all the time. "I was never part of the Bristol scene. My sound was a Knowle West sound. Massive Attack wouldn't come to my area because they know they'd have got beaten up there."

Tricky feels that he was used. "I gave them an edge. They had me in photo shoots and videos because I looked hard. They used me when they had trouble in St Pauls or to deal with local hardmen like Big Derek. For me it was just business. I just wanted to get paid. I did Aftermathand offered them that and they didn't want it, so I released it myself. It was always just business."

The end came over sausages and chips. "I remember being on the bus to London with them to go to some recording session. I was hungry and wanted £2.50 to get some sausages and chips and they wouldn't give it to me. Now, my boys back in Knowle West, they'd have gone to jail for me. But these guys? They wouldn't even give me the money to buy sausages and chips. When that stuff started happening, I knew it was over. They weren't my friends, they weren't my boys."

These days, Trickyhas other things on his mind - a cracking new album, a tour and a whole set of preconceptions to turn on their head.

Once upon a time, they used to call him Tricky for particular reasons. Now he's the survivor looking back on it all. "If the 16-year-old Tricky walked in here now, he'd say I can't believe you are still alive," chuckles Tricky. "When I was 18 or 19, around Massive Attack time, people wrote that Tricky could amount to something if he lives another year. I was doing crazy shit back then. So, yeah, I'm happy to be still here."

He then puffs on his spliff and asks if you think it's a good idea for him to move to Barcelona. The Catalans won't know what's hit them.

Knowle West Boy is released on July 11th on Domino. Tricky plays the Oxegen festival on the same day. Tracks from the new album are streaming at  www.myspace.com/trickola

Label mates
PERHAPS one of the most noteworthy elements of Tricky's return is his hook-up with Domino Records. "They're not like a conventional label", says Tricky of Domino. "Nothing they have done has been done in the traditional way."

On the go since since 1993, the label initially made its reputation on the back of licensing such US acts as Sebadoh, , Royal Trux, the late, great Elliott Smith, Will Oldham in his many guises and , thanks to Laurence Bell's hook-up with the Drag City label.

But it was the arrival of Franz Ferdinand and the Arctic Monkeys, and their huge success, that allowed the label to expand and become one of the most important indie labels around.

However, there's more to Domino than just boys with guitars. It has provided a home for Kieran Hebden's electronic trickery as Four Tet, with acts like To Rococo Rot and Von Sudenfed (The Fall's Mark E. Smith linking up with Mouse On Mars) also following the trail to the label's HQ in south London.

Domino's roster these days also includes The Kills, These New Puritans and Bonde Do Role, while it has done an excellent job chronicling the key releases of Young Marble Giants, The Triffids, Orange Juice and Liquid Liquid.