I like Joe Muggs and his book is absolutely superb but this piece I just read your him in the Guardian got me thinking. He describes trip hop the way it was when it was over - I.e cinematic strings and a vocal… but thinking about it a FUSE tune or slow Kenny Larkin record sat alongside an early Shadow 12 or Sam Sever or say a weird jazz acid record. For me trip hop was some amazing music that got labelled by a journalist not understanding what it was which then ate itself. It sort of misses all the slow acid and weirdo freak beat business and that the orb were almost as much trip hop as Portishead. There was so much good music that came through before it became a stereotype. I loved the music before it became that.
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Doesn’t that happen with most if not all genres once they get labelled?
With the label comes the ‘rules’ & the parameters that the music must then stick to, which just reduces a scene that was eclectic & varied to something one dimesional & can eventually kill scenes off like it did with Trip Hop.
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I guess. Some killer records though.
By jazz acid I mean this one. At 4:30 it gets fun.
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DJ Krush was trip hop, right? Loved his stuff.
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And me, he had a great sound.
Genres suck
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Love the album Krush did with jazz trumpeter Toshinori Kondo
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i should have bought one new - can’t afford one now!
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i paid a lot of bills playing this “genre” - there’s a whole lot that did well here in the states thanks to so many kids raised on hip hop and wanting to hang out in chill bars without someone shouting from a stage.
it did go a little bit too hotel-lobby, but understandable in retrospect - there was plenty of good underground house that went a bit too hotel-poolside.
full disclosure, i had a regular hotel gig for a few years, and it was great. zero 7 and hedkandi at a minimum.
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This is my Business Techno for the month. I just finished reading the expansive Wikipedia entry for the hedkandi brand and I gotta say it’s really hilarious and frightening and impressive and I can’t believe I made it 44 years without ever being aware that it was a thing.
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I love it, what ever “genre” you want to call it. Skylab #1 is a brilliant album btw. Found this one from it on YT.
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Yeah, I thought it was a very fertile period and style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAoUou5Yk38
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Classic.
So many bedroom heads producing slowmo beats it’s hard to know where to start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MJ73siiRb8
To me trip hop was always just slow instrumental hip hop rebranded for people who didn’t like rap because it was “too shouty/Angry/All about guns/bitches” etc etc.
I always liked the term used for it on Soulstrut…
BLAZING DOWNTEMPO
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I absolutely love this tune. Production, incredible voice, pathos. I don’t know how well-remembered Attica Blues are.
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Seashell is something else.
Always had a knack for Howie B. This one flew totally under the radar I think. Proper trippy stuff, I associate it with triphop but might be wrong…
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