Same with me, also the loss of Martina Tropley Bird no longer being on the albums also had something to do with it. Her first solo album deserves a mention here if not already posted.
Absolutely. I'm just using every possible excuse to bring up Bowery Electric! Somewhere they were described being "dream pop, post-rock and triphop while simultaneously being none of these things"
Burial founded a new genre of his own much as the Bristol artists did, but it's also possible to hear his first two LPs as a last gasp / delayed effect of trip-hop. Those albums are blunted with the requisite dread.
Burial was more influenced by jungle, garage, and dubstep, not really Trip-Hop. His music has way more dread than anything that could really be called trip-hop, it borders on hauntology. All electronic music genres seem to influence each other to some degree so I see what you're saying though. This is a pretty good overview on where he's coming from and his influences/influence: Why Burial’s Untrue Is the Most Important Electronic Album of the Century So Far
Flame from Crustation's 'Bloom' from 1997 is top tier trip-hop as is Purple from the same album (Air remixed Purple to boot!)
South from Alpha's 'South' EP 2001 (also on their second album 'The Impossible Thrill') They actually hailed from Bristol and are probably the best trip-hop group that you never hear about anymore (they probably also aren't all that fond of the term) but they are about to release their 12th (!) album later this year. Essential in any trip-hop anthology I would say.
Late to the party and most of the major artists and albums have been mentioned in multiple. Dummy and Mezzanine are two of the finest albums of the decade. So I'll throw out a band that came out of the Bristol scene and sit on the edges: Kosheen. This track is on their sophomore album, Kokopelli. Resist (album: Resist)
One for the road.....Coming Up For Air from Dobie's 'The Sound Of One Hand Clapping' album from 1998 with a gorgeous vocal from Raissa:
Although not Trip Hop, "The Hard Sell", has contributions from many of the people already mentioned: 0272 has Crustation's Ian Dark, The Federation were an early Mo' Wax signing, Sister Redz worked with Fresh 4, the Tricky track was enginered by Geoff Barrow of Portishead, Sean Oliver was in Rip Rig & Panic and the New Age Steppers alongside fellow Rip Rig & Panic member and early supporter of Portishead Neneh Cherry as well as Mark Stewart, Intime is Neil Davidge who often collaborates with Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja and was also in Hidden Chipsters with Ian Dark and John Stapleton who for many years worked alongside The Federation's Si John in Tony's Records, Tru Funk included Full Cycle's DJ Die and Way Out West's Jody Wisternoff and worked with Smith & Mighty who in turn pioneered the Bristol Sound and produced "Any Love" the first record to use the name Massive Attack, the members of 3P.M. also worked with Smith & Mighty having releases on their 3 Stripe label, the album is rounded out by the Pop Group's Mark Stewart and Glaxo Babies/Maximum Joy's Tony Wrafter who like Mark Stewart also had various release on On-U Sound. There are many other connections and intersections between these and other previously mention Bristol artists, but hopefully you get the idea of just how small and self-contained the Bristol scene was.
Ah yes, 1998, that is a good album, nice eclectic electronica record, on her own and met with great reviews, and I bought it, and I really liked it..... So fast forward a couple years and we have all these internet discount coupons coming out our ears for all the startup music stores, and I'm ordering CDs like I won the lottery or something, and I happen to see in AMG that Leila has a "new" album out called Love Story. So I hop on the bus and order that baby up with one of my discount coupon codes and pretty soon I have this in my mailbox.... Huh? Well, if you've read many of my posts here you know by now I may not always be the sharpest knife in the rack, but something was telling me that this wasn't quite the same musical image as the last album cover was trying to project. But you can't always judge a record by the cover, so I put my concerns aside and gave it a listen. Didn't take long to realize something was terribly wrong because coming out of my speakers was some smaltzy ballads hung on top of a glossy LA production (with apologies of course to all the big fans of smaltzy ballads). After further research, I found that AMG was quite wrong, and the folks at wherever I ordered it from just repeated the confusion. Same name, different person. Shoulda sent it right back but never got around to it. Some of these ladies should think a little more about using last names
Sneaker Pimps mentioned up-thread. 6 Underground is a great track, equalled by Spin Spin Sugar. I prefer the album version to Armand Van Helden's mega club mix that made it famous. Damn, that track was everywhere.
The momentum post hip-hop electronic music built throughout the Nineties was derailed by 9/11. The general unease leading towards Y2K informed the 'brooding' character of the best artists at the time. It's not much of a leap to hear the more sinister bits of Wu-Tang in the music on Portishead's Dummy, for instance. Tricky's second LP was Pre-Millenium Tension, and he subsequently spoke of being lost as the Aughts proceeded. Following 9/11, genre experiments were further splintered into micro-fragments which were reassembled most effectively by Burial. Again, I'll trace his two debut LPs back to Bristol, and critical claims aside, not necessarily to Manchester. In fact, the cinematic artifice of those records shows more of a Shaolin influence than a Factory Records one. The cinematic quality of trip-hop, and that which followed, is an important qualifier. Dummy is a good example of it, but the peak is likely Massive Attack's Mezzanine. In a popular sense, this album was a peak. It was the explosion of media, through increasing digitalization, which became a hallmark of trip-hop. The Bristol artists understood this, if imperfectly, but it had a direct impact on Stefan Betke, who released his three eponymous 'monochrome' LPs under the name of Pole. This music wasn't orthodox trip-hop, as if there was such a thing, but the music Betke made at that time was certainly part of its lineage. From there, it's a series of short steps to Burial, and to the monumental project recently completed by the Caretaker. To my ears, this music has all been of a piece, and is among the most challenging of the past twenty years. One last note. The Portishead LP Third is a stone masterpiece, but went a bit unnoticed in the world at large. It's one of the great ones. In terms of the aforementioned dread, the album ends in a somewhat bleak and horrifying manner: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=S7KkhwLUe00 "Threads" is a brilliant summation of deep, underappreciated tendencies in pop music since the end of the twentieth century.
In a wider sense, it should also be noted that Jacques Derrida's Spectres of Marx was published in 1993, and the book's ideas were directly drawn upon subsequently by popular critics like Simon Reynolds, and most importantly, Mark Fisher. This can't be stressed enough. Pandemic and quarantine have shown us as much.
DJ Food aka Strictly Kev wrote an excellent article (ahem !) a few years ago about his take on the genre : Nostalgia #3 : Trip Hop | DJ Food
“Essentially psychedelic beat collages, usually instrumental, embracing samples, analogue electronics and dub FX. Largely dispensing with the ego of the vocalist in favour of spoken word, incorporating found sounds, fuzz and the most banging drums ever recorded.” And there you have it!
Hauntology: A not-so-new-critical manifestation: Hauntology: A not-so-new critical manifestation Ten years on but a fair intro
The height of trip-hop was in and around 1995. It was great going to record stores back then and shopping for compilations from all sorts of really small indie labels, with great stuff from the UK, France, Austria, and Belgium. For a couple of years there, trip hop had a pretty clearly defined sound, and a lot of great acts pushing the genre, some of which have been posted here in this thread. As the decade wore on, the genre mutated, like pretty much every genre does over time (Dylan/Newport). Some of these sounds were co-opted by artists who were enamored with trip-hop production and incorporated these sounds into their music. Just like a lot of bands took the grunge sounds of a couple of acts from Seattle and co-opted it. And a lot of really crappy music followed. What I find great about electronic music is that it is constantly mutating, sub genres splinter off and then form sub sub genres. A lot of trip hop music sampled sounds from 60s movies, hauntology is influenced by BBC radiophonic sounds and pastoral horror. Hauntologic music can sometimes make you tap your foot and shake your a$s, although certainly that is not the primary intent, not to the degree that trip hop music creators were going for. This thread could morph into “here are all the genres that influenced trip hop, and all the genres that were influenced by trip hop” and it would probably turn into dozens of pages with a lot of interesting music. Similarly you could draw a line from Robert Johnson to Cannibal Corpse and make a fair case how one evolved from the other. But we’re not getting college credit for this thread, are we? Meanwhile, some more OG trip hop
