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.

I have it but its missing the last track. I have the last track queued so i'll see if i can get that too.

Oh and thanks for this JH. I'll probably give it a go tomorrow. It looks good.

Downloading right now. I've listened to a few trip hop artists, mostly Massive Attack, DJ Shadow (both of them I discovered thanks to Satchmo's Jive Essence thread) and Flying Lotus. Looking forward to this thread as a good way of exploring the genre more.

i just checked out your mix. you do indeed have an expansive definition of the genre! i knew most of these already, but a few were new. Terranova especially impressed me, i'll have to track them down later :)

now that you've thrown together that eschewed the usual, perhaps you could list what you consider to be the usual? you mention Massive attack, Portishead, Tricky. those are definitely the big three. but who else?

i've never liked putting DJ Shadow in there, his stuff is more ambient breaks than trip hop. that UNKLE track you chose is good here, but most of theirs is not.

what about something like Hooverphonic? some of their tracks definitely fit (like 2Wicky), but others are very much upbeat and cheerful. what about Everything But the Girl (there last 2 at least)? Morcheeba?

wikipedia even lists Bjork and Gorillaz as trip hop!

this is definitely the genre that gives me the biggest headache when i'm tagging new music...

This is an interesting take. I think "melancholic electronic" is a big part of my personal definition of the genre, but definitely still with hip hop elements. If that element is removed then there's nothing trip-hop about it, IMO. So if the term is applied to most non commercial and densely atmospheric dance music...with no trace of hip hop...I'm feeling that's incorrect (and I know you're not stating that as your personal definition of the genre). Much of it probably depends on our own environments, countries always have varying views on genres and stuff. But if a piece of electronic music has no element of hip hop I'm not gonna call it trip hop, that's for sure. There is plenty of dense and atmospheric electronic that has no trace of hip hop or at least not enough to classify it as trip hop, and to me that's usually what I'd call IDM or downtempo or simply electronic. You did mention Down Tempo, Nu Jazz, and Breakbeat being included or also labeled as trip-hop, and that's true as long as there are traces of hip hop. I mean that has to be the one common element is what I'm saying. I think I am rambling and need to go to bed. :p:

I agree with what you are saying and it's what I was trying to say in a roundabout sort of way! what's labelled as Trip hop sometimes is simply atmospheric dance but it's an easily applied term to that particular sound.

I just recently got some Portishead, hoping to start easing myself into this genre. I'm sure that comp will help.

I think the key component of Trip Hop is the Hip Hop influenced beats. Hence why Portishead's third album is more of a Downtempo Electronic album than a Trip Hop one. I always see Massive Attack as the quintessential Trip Hop act.

^ Hmm... that's strange.
I view it quite the opposite.

I listened to Massive Attack's Mezzanine for the first time yesterday. Pretty good stuff overall, though I didn't hear a hip-hop influence on every track. Not that that would disqualify it or anything, just saying I was kind of looking for it and it wasn't always there.