Tricky’s Maxinquaye still holds enough mystery that Rough Trade East is packed for a talk with him for the album’s big re-release. I’m stuck behind a pillar and Tricky himself is invisible, but listening to his disembodied voice is strangely familiar, almost comforting, if you’re used to listening intently to him on headphones.

Michael A Gonzales writes a brilliant review of the massively extended reissue in the new October issue of The Wire, revisiting the reputation and resonance of Maxinquaye around the time of its release from Gonzales’s stateside perspective. For me, the mysteries that remain are the seams and ellipses of Maxinquaye, the way voices unexpectedly punch in and out, and female voices blend into male. It seems to embody uncertainty and ambiguity on its most fundamental level.

Tricky prefaces the chat tonight by saying “going back is difficult”, so we don’t hear much about these uncanny moments. Producer/engineer Mark Saunders’s memories of the sessions remain a great read on how it apparently came together. Tricky talks a lot tonight about fear – of performing, of laying down his own vocals, of picking up the mic for the first time, of social encounters – and praises Björk in particular for her contrasting fearlessness in the studio.

Maybe there’s a fear of silence, too, as Tricky asks for background music for the talk, and quickly insists that the mic is passed around the audience so they can ask their own questions.

Strange things happen. The microphone isn’t returned to interviewer Dave Haslam, so we only hear one side of the conversation as Tricky narrates his wayward trajectory through major label record deals towards a serendipitous encounter with current collaborator Marta Złakowska. He talks about being a hard taskmaster in the studio, and how Bristol is overrated. It’s revealing and awkwardly intimate, like eavesdropping on one side of a stranger’s phone call on a bus.

Tricky doesn’t like to look back, as he says, and he’s not interested in talking much longer, much as Haslam strives to engage him. The new super deluxe Maxinquaye package contains several ‘reincarnated‘ versions of its tracks, and they pass the original songs like strangers in the night, sharing a line or two of lyrics and sometimes not much more. They have the poignancy of fading photos. When I get back, I listen to Maxinquaye, which still seems a mystery even to the man himself.