Trip-hop has come and gone, and for the last decade Tricky has been on a journey of trial and error.

Since his pioneering debut Maxinquaye, the Bristol legend has sought to break new ground, and it hasn’t always worked; on ‘Does It’ he has returned to a sound he’s at ease with and it works wonders.

He claims “I just needed freedom to do what I wanna do. Now there’s no rules. It’s out of the box. That’s the only that’s going to work with artists like me.” and certainly ‘Does It’ is the most free we’ve heard Tricky in a while, bringing to mind the desolate grind of his underrated Pre-Millenium Tension. The ingredients are tested and true; workman-like bass, skeletal percussion and a near-emotionless female hook, but this is an older, wiser Tricky and his hoarse rhymes are as incendiary as they ever were.

The video is a collection of war and protest footage, cut in with shots of the man himself, and while he asserts that he’s “a happy guy”, it’s easy to see that he’s fed up with the state of play. Unsurprisingly for someone who covered Public Enemy it’s pop music culture that gets the brunt of his anger: “This pop-star stuff, it’s played out. That’s for teenyboppers – eight-year-olds that can be manipulated. There’s no Kurt Cobains around at the moment.”. Let’s hope this sentiment carries into the imminent full-length then, we like it when he’s angry. [via Rolling Stone]

False Idols drops on May 28 on the False Idols imprint.