Trip Hop
Trip Hop is a genre usually attributed to the city of Bristol U.K when artist's and DJ's began to fuse American Hip hop beats with laid back beats which took nods from Dub, Reggae and the Acid Jazz of the late 80's early 90's. However many of the emerging bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead abhorred the term Trip Hop as the music took influence from many different sources and often rarely used traditional Hip Hop rhythms. Indeed a similar sound was making waves in the U.S at the same time with DJ Shadow beginning to produce a down tempo vocally stripped form of hip hop and NY's Bowery Electric stripping the sound even further and although Massive Attacks Blue Lines album (1991) is usually classed as the first Trip hop album, the scene began gathering serious momentum from 1994 onwards with the sound already splintering and taking on many more elements.
Music as diverse as Down Tempo, Nu Jazz, Breakbeat and instrumental Hip hop all being labelled with a Trip Hop sound. With this in mind a whole hosts of artists can be included under the umbrella of Trip hop including Amon Tobin, Prefuse 73, Nightmares On Wax, Bonobo etc despite them only having elements of the original sounds.
Usually todays definition of Trip Hop is melancholic Electronic music with a lot of hip hop elements virtually gone which is neither a good or bad description as Trip hop is a label attributed to most if not all non commercial and densely atmospheric Dance music.
Compilation Taster
For this opening compilation have eschewed the usual names (Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky etc) to give you more of a taste of the diversity of what is termed as Trip hop. You may have noticed I have included a cover of Portishead's 'Wandering Star' by the beatbox artist 'Kid Beyond'. I have included this as it's an example of embracing an old school hip hop technique to put a spin on a tune that itself is influenced by hip Hop and it's as if the sound has come full circle. Such a shame that this fantastic artist (who ONLY uses his voice and no instruments apart from delay pedals etc) doesn't get more notices.
Tracklisting:
1.UNKLE-Blood Stain
2.Terranova-Bombing Bastards
3.Blockhead-Forest Crunk
4.Lali Puna-Everywhere & Allover
5.The Psychonauts-Dream Chaser
6.Sneaker Pimps-Wasted Early Sunday Morning
7.Atomica-Salt
8.DJ Shadow-Changeling/Transmission 1
9.Kid Beyond-Wandering Star
10.Lulu Rouge-Thinking Of You
Threaded Mode