Tricky @ The Arches, 19 Feb

Emerging amidst the lads-and-lager brawl of mid-nineties Britpop, Tricky’s multifarious debut, Maxinquaye, flew in the face of the simplified collective identity widely embraced in British music culture at the time. Under the now bruised, beaten and somewhat belittled label of trip-hop, this debut release brushed aside any notion of pre-defined genre, fearlessly meshing straight up hip-hop with dub, funk, punk and rock. From that seminal moment, Tricky’s modus operandi has been the evocation of a darker, increasingly challenging sound, and the provocation of this newer material alongside his classic earlier work make his appearance at the Arches a must see. [Paul Neeson]