Trip Hop - Great Music Labelled Wrong

another great one from Photek
Photek- Into the 90’s
(Into the 90's - YouTube)

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One of the best things Shadow has done imo

https://youtu.be/ibW6uW2EBGs

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Another good Howie B track

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those headz comps on mo’ wax contain serious tunes!

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If you like this sort of thing it’s worth picking up the self titled LP by Express Rising…

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there’s a few in the Back To Love series of Hed Kandi comps worth picking up if you can get them cheap, nothing you haven’t heard before but useful to have for full unmixed tracks. But the brand artwork, all those sexualised cartoon women, truly awful to look at. “Let me sell you some soulful house by putting a horny drawing on the front.”

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I keep coming back to this Roza Terenzi mix from last year. It has a definite ‘Trip Hop’ feel to it.

Tofistock Bazaar Mix 37

The Organized Konfusion remix of Tender is still one of my favorite songs.

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Here are two that stand the test of time for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WG0rjNApFk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b0pPKAwpzQ

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Those comps got me into the music, so I can’t fault them for that, but year those cartoon drawings don’t really hold up - although 13 year-old me would disagree.

At it’s best it was a scene that offered the followers a window into the best music (plus design/fashion/art etc) from the time and the previous decades that tied into a common theme sort of ruled over by the demi god of Lavelle. At it’s worst it was a needlessly elitist and smug “I have more cool stuff than you” type of scene, where people would show off the limited edition, rare or plain unobtainable items they had and the influence they wielded over others.

For most people it seemed to be just “oh, like DJ Shadow and DJ Krush? yeah that’s cool”

The genre tag itself never really summed up the experience of going to see the artists, or people associated with the scene and the atmosphere of those events. They definitely had their own fashion style, attitude and soundtrack, that if done well, wouldn’t just be 89bpm instrumental beats.

But that is not to say that a night of just Mo Wax related stoned 89bpm beats couldn’t be summed up as Trip Hop either. I don’t really know how you could write about this scene in a way that wouldn’t just confuse, enrage, or just plain turn off young people. I think most people have a bit more of a binary idea of what genres are, so trying to argue that Roni Size/DJ Krust/Carl Craig were as much of a part of the Trip Hop experience as DJ Shadow was would be a bit of a stretch for most casual fans to stomach.

As a DJ lead scene, I thought the selections of a lot of the post dubstep (or whatever you want to call it) were, at times, an up to date facsimile of the type of djing you would hear in the mid to late 90s from a lot of the so called Trip Hop djs. A sort of musical lesson in “do you know the classics that built this scene we are part of?” where UKG/classic techno/nyc house and garage/juke/ghettotech etc would comingle with the latest Martyn/Hudmo/Hessle Audio type releases.

I always thought The Psychonauts were the unsung heroes of Trip Hop.

Edit: In my opinion, obviously…

Is this trip hop? Because if it is I guess I love trip hop.

https://youtu.be/NJ3CA_RThDY

The thing is I cannot think of another artist labeled as trip hop or downtempo or whatever that came close to matching the quality or tone that this album achieved.

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Portishead definitely. Same for Tricky and Massive Attack. Seemed like pretty much everything coming out of Bristol early/mid-90s was Trip Hop.

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these are some standout trip hop tracks - some known, some not so known

https://youtu.be/UoYyD-0CUzM

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Geoff Barrow goes crazy if you label Portishead as trip hop.

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Great release that. A random find for me about 15 years ago. Just looked interesting enough to take home with me! I don’t think the follow up was as strong

maybe not entirely ‘trip hop’, but I always thought these comps were a pretty good take on the mixed-up laid-back scene at the time:

Freezone 5 containing this gem:

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Remember watching DJ Cam do an instore, mid afternoon DJ set at the old Piccadilly Records location around the time this came out.
He was billed as France’s answer to Grandmaster Flash… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

https://youtu.be/6W_y7MPCduY

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Do you know what he prefers?

I dont, but if you ask him on twitter im sure he will be happy to tell you.

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