*** Tricky

JUXTAPOSE

(Island)

Tricky's never made an "easy" album. More venturesome than the average popster, he knows that covert communiqués will better serve his status as an insurgent. Regardless, pop has always arisen from the Brit b-boy's clever experiments -- his anxiety-drenched melanges are both canny and catchy.

The trip-hop avatar's pithy new Juxtapose finds him looking outside the charmed circle that has previously helped him create his hermetic sound. Here he's down with Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, and with Dame Grease, the producer who helped DMX turn anger into art. As Juxtapose's 10 addictive tracks swirl by, Tricky and crew make a case for the vanguard's having a more savvy pop sense than it gets credit for. It's an achievement that comes down to design. Repetition, dissonance, haze -- Tricky's architectural sense shows insights into just how gripping computer-generated smoke and mirror moves can be. No one else has cast claustrophobia in such an appealing way.

"Hot like a Sauna" is a good example. Three vocalists (Street Dog and Kioka Williams share the mike) vie for position. A "horn" line echoes in the air. Four or five discrete pulses zip around one another. When the track ends, you're humming the chorus. But there is no chorus. Simultaneously radical and cogent? That's tricky enough for me.

-- Jim Macnie