Trip hop

Trip hop (sometimes used synonymously with "downtempo")[3] is a musical genre that originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol.[4] It has been described as "a fusion of hip hop and electronica until neither genre is recognizable",[5] and may incorporate a variety of styles, including funk, dub, soul, psychedelia, R&B, and house, as well as other forms of electronic music.[6] Trip hop can be highly experimental.[7]

Not to be confused with Illbient or Chillhop.

Trip hop
Other namesDowntempo
Stylistic origins
Cultural originsc. late 1980s – early 1990s, Bristol, England
Derivative forms
Regional scenes
  • United Kingdom
  • Australia
Other topics

Deriving from later idioms of acid house,[7] the term was first used by the British music media to describe the more experimental variant of breakbeat emerging from the Bristol Sound scene in the early 1990s, which contained influences of soul, funk, and jazz.[8] It was pioneered by acts like Massive Attack, Tricky, and Portishead.[9] Trip hop achieved commercial success in the 1990s, and has been described as "Europe's alternative choice in the second half of the '90s".[7]

Characteristics

Common musical aesthetics include a bass-heavy drumbeat,[10] often providing the slowed down breakbeat samples similar to standard 1990s hip hop beats, giving the genre a more psychedelic and mainstream feel.[10] Vocals in trip hop are oftentimes female and feature characteristics of various singing styles including R&B, jazz and rock. The female-dominant vocals of trip hop may be partially attributable to the influence of genres such as jazz and early R&B, in which female vocalists were more common. However, there are notable exceptions: Massive Attack[11] and Groove Armada collaborated with male and female vocalists, Tricky often features vocally in his own productions along with Martina Topley-Bird,[12] and Chris Corner provided vocals for later albums with Sneaker Pimps.[13]

Trip hop is also known for its melancholic sound. This may be partly due to the fact that several acts were inspired by post-punk bands;[14] Tricky and Massive Attack both covered and sampled songs of Siouxsie and the Banshees[15][16] and The Cure.[17][18] Tricky opened his second album Nearly God by a version of "Tattoo", a proto-trip-hop song of Siouxsie and the Banshees initially recorded in 1983.[19]

Trip hop tracks often incorporate Rhodes pianos, saxophones, trumpets, and flutes, and may employ unconventional instruments such as the theremin and Mellotron. Trip hop differs from hip hop in theme and overall tone. Contrasting with gangsta rap and its hard-hitting lyrics, trip hop offers a more aural atmospherics influenced by experimental folk and rock acts of the seventies, such as John Martyn,[20] combined with instrumental hip hop, turntable scratching, and breakbeat rhythms. Regarded in some ways as a 1990s update of fusion, trip hop may be said to "transcend" the hardcore rap styles and lyrics with atmospheric overtones to create a more mellow tempo.[21]

History

1990s

The term "trip-hop" first appeared in print in June 1994.[22] Andy Pemberton, a music journalist writing for Mixmag, used it to describe "In/Flux", a single by American producer DJ Shadow and UK act RPM, with the latter signed to Mo' Wax Records.[23][24]

In Bristol, hip hop began to seep into the consciousness of a subculture already well-schooled in Jamaican forms of music. DJs, MCs, b-boys and graffiti artists grouped together into informal soundsystems.[25] Like the pioneering Bronx crews of DJs Kool Herc, Afrika Bambataa and Grandmaster Flash, the soundsystems provided party music for public spaces, often in the economically deprived council estates from which some of their members originated. Bristol's soundsystem DJs, drawing heavily on Jamaican dub music, typically used a laid-back, slow and heavy drum beat ("down tempo").

Bristol's Wild Bunch crew became one of the soundsystems to put a local spin on the international phenomenon, helping to birth Bristol's signature sound of trip hop, often termed "the Bristol Sound".[25] The Wild Bunch and its associates included at various times in its existence the MC Adrian "Tricky Kid" Thaws, the graffiti artist and lyricist Robert "3D" Del Naja, producer Jonny Dollar and the DJs Nellee Hooper, Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall. As the hip hop scene matured in Bristol and musical trends evolved further toward acid jazz and house in the late 1980s,[26] the golden era of the soundsystem began to end. The Wild Bunch signed a record deal and evolved into Massive Attack,[27] a core collective of 3D, Mushroom and Daddy G, with significant contributions from Tricky Kid (soon shortened to Tricky), Dollar, and Hooper on production duties, along with a rotating cast of other vocalists.[27]

Another influence came from Gary Clail's Tackhead soundsystem. Clail often worked with former The Pop Group singer Mark Stewart.[28] The latter experimented with his band Mark Stewart & the Maffia, which consisted of New York session musicians Skip McDonald, Doug Wimbish, and Keith LeBlanc, who had been a part of the house band for the Sugarhill Records record label.[29] Produced by Adrian Sherwood, the music combined hip hop with experimental rock and dub and sounded like a premature version of what later became trip hop. In 1993, Kirsty MacColl released "Angel", one of the first examples of the genre crossing over to pop, a hybrid that dominated the charts toward the end of the 1990s.

Mainstream breakthrough
Massive Attack, a British trip hop group that helped bring the genre to mainstream success in the 1990s[30]

Massive Attack's first album Blue Lines was released in 1991 to huge success in the United Kingdom.[31] Blue Lines was seen widely as the first major manifestation of a uniquely British hip hop movement, but the album's hit single "Unfinished Sympathy" and several other tracks, while their rhythms were largely sample-based, were not seen as hip hop songs in any conventional sense. Produced by Dollar, Shara Nelson (an R&B singer) featured on the orchestral "Unfinished", and Jamaican dance hall star Horace Andy provided vocals on several other tracks, as he would throughout Massive Attack's career.[32] Massive Attack released their second album entitled Protection in 1994. Although Tricky stayed on in a lesser role, and Hooper again produced, the fertile dance music scene of the early 1990s had informed the record, and it was seen as an even more significant shift away from the Wild Bunch era.

In the June 1994 issue of UK magazine Mixmag, music journalist Andy Pemberton used the term trip hop to describe the hip hop instrumental "In/Flux", a 1993 single by San Francisco's DJ Shadow, and other similar tracks released on the Mo' Wax label and being played in London clubs at the time. "In/Flux", with its mixed up bpms, spoken word samples, strings, melodies, bizarre noises, prominent bass, and slow beats, gave the listener the impression they were on a musical trip, according to Pemberton.[33] Soon, however, Massive Attack's dubby, jazzy, psychedelic, electronic textures, rooted in hip hop sampling technique but taking flight into many styles, were described by journalists as the template of the eponymous genre.

Tricky, a major trip hop artist

In 1993, Icelandic musician Björk released Debut, produced by Wild Bunch member Nellee Hooper.[34] The album, although rooted in four-on-the-floor house music, contained elements of trip hop and is credited as one of the first albums to introduce electronic dance music into mainstream pop.[35][36] She had been in contact with London's underground electronic music scene and was romantically involved with trip hop musician Tricky. Björk embraced trip hop even more with her 1995 album Post by collaborating with Tricky and Howie B. Homogenic, her 1997 album, has been described as a pinnacle of trip hop music.[37]

1994 and 1995 saw trip hop near the peak of its popularity, with artists such as Howie B and Earthling making significant contributions. Ninja Tune, the independent record label founded by the Coldcut duo, would significantly influence the trip-hop sound in London and beyond with breakthrough artists DJ Food, 9 Lazy 9, Up, Bustle & Out, Funki Porcini and The Herbaliser, among others. The period also marked the debut of two acts who, along with Massive Attack, would define the Bristol scene for years to come.

In 1994, Portishead, a trio comprising singer Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow, and Adrian Utley, released their debut album Dummy. Their background differed from Massive Attack in many ways: one of Portishead's primary influences was 1960s and 1970s film soundtrack LPs.[38] Nevertheless, Portishead shared the scratchy, jazz-sample-based aesthetic of early Massive Attack (whom Barrow had briefly worked with during the recording of Blue Lines), and the sullen, fragile vocals of Gibbons also brought them wide acclaim. In 1995, Dummy was awarded the Mercury Music Prize as the best British album of the year,[39] giving trip-hop as a genre its greatest exposure yet. Portishead's music, seen as cutting edge in its film-noir feel and stylish, yet emotional appropriations of past sounds, was also widely imitated, causing the band to recoil from the trip-hop label they had inadvertently helped popularize.

Tricky also released his debut solo album Maxinquaye in 1995, to great critical acclaim. The album was produced largely in collaboration with Mark Saunders. Tricky employed whispered, often abstract stream-of-consciousness murmuring, remote from the gangsta-rap braggadocio of the mid-1990s US hip hop scene. Even more unusually, however, many of the solo songs on Maxinquaye featured little of Tricky's own voice: his then-lover, Martina Topley-Bird, sang them, including her reimagining of Public Enemy's militant 1988 rap "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos", while other songs were male-female duets dealing with sex and love in oblique ways, over beds of sometimes dissonant samples. Within a year Tricky had released two more full-length albums which were considered even more challenging, without finding the same popularity as his Bristol contemporaries Massive Attack and Portishead.[40] Through his brief collaborations with Björk, however, he also exerted influence closer to the pop and alternative rock mainstream, and he developed a large cult fan-base.

Musician Poe released her 1995 debut Hello, an album that featured trip-hop elements, to critical praise.

Although not as popular in the United States, bands like Portishead and Sneaker Pimps saw moderate airplay on alternative-rock stations across the country.[41]

"Post-trip hop"
Björk, an artist who has often incorporated trip hop in her music[42][43][44]

After the initial success of trip hop in the mid-1990s, "post-trip-hop" artists include Baby Fox, Bowery Electric, Esthero, Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, Anomie Belle,[45] Alpha, Jaianto, Mudville and Cibo Matto and Lamb. These artists incorporated trip hop into other genres, including ambient, soul, IDM, industrial, dubstep, breakbeat, drum and bass, acid jazz, and new-age. The first printed use of the term "post-trip hop" was in an October 2002 article of The Independent, and was used to describe the band Second Person.[46]

Trip hop has also influenced artists in other genres, including Gorillaz, Emancipator, Nine Inch Nails, Travis, Queens of the Stone Age, How to Destroy Angels,[47] Beth Orton, The Flaming Lips, Bitter:Sweet, Beck, The xx and Deftones.[48] Several tracks on Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue's 1997 album Impossible Princess also displayed a trip hop influence.[49]

Various prominent artists and groups, such as Janet Jackson,[50] Kylie Minogue,[51] Madonna,[52][53] Björk,[54][55][56] and Radiohead,[57] have also been influenced by the genre. Trip hop has spawned several subgenres,[58] including illbient (dub-based trip hop which combines ambient and industrial hip hop).

2000s

Trip hop continued to influence notable artists in the 2000s. Norwegian avant-garde band Ulver incorporated trip hop in their ambient/electronic/jazzy album Perdition City. Atmospheric rock band Antimatter included some trip hop elements in their first two albums. Australian composer Rob Dougan proposed a mix of trip hop beats, orchestral music and electronics. RJD2 began his career as a DJ, but in 2001, began releasing albums under El-P's Def Jux Label.[59] Zero 7's album Simple Things, and in particular, its lead single "Destiny", was regarded highly by underground listeners and achieved significant popularity.[60] In 2006, Gotye debuted his second studio album, Like Drawing Blood. The songs on the album featured down-tempo hip-hop beats and dub style bass reminiscent of trip hop.[61] Hip hop groups Zion I and the Dub Pistols also displayed heavy trip hop influence.[62][63] Norwegian singer and songwriter Kate Havnevik is a classically trained musician, but also incorporates trip hop into her work.[64]

Many producers who were not explicitly trip-hop artists also displayed its influence during the early 2000s. Daniel Nakamura, aka Dan The Automator, released two albums that were heavily inspired by trip hop. 2000 album Deltron 3030,[65] was a concept album about a rapper, portrayed by Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, from the future. 2001 saw the release of his side project, Lovage. Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By,[66] with special guests Mike Patton, Prince Paul, Maseo, Damon Albarn, and Afrika Bambaataa. British producer Fatboy Slim's breakthrough album, Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars,[67] was his most commercially successful release.

2010s

Major notable releases include Massive Attack's Heligoland, their first studio album in seven years, and Dutch's A Bright Cold Day in 2010, which was met with positive reviews including a 7/10 score from inyourspeakers.com. The latter group consists of members including Jedi Mind Tricks producer Stoupe the Enemy of Mankind.[68][69]

DJ Shadow's The Less You Know, the Better was released in 2011 after a highly publicised unveiling of songs, including appearances on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show and previews at a performance in Antwerp in August 2010.[70] The album was met with "generally favorable reviews" on Metacritic, with some criticising Shadow's lack of originality. Sam Richards of NME felt that the album sounded "like the work of a man struggling to recall his motivations for making music in the first place."

Geoff Barrow's album titled ">>" was released in 2012 and received high scores from journalists, including an 8/10 from NME and Spin magazine.[71]

Lana Del Rey released her second album, Born to Die in 2012, which contained a string of trip hop ballads.[72] The album topped the charts in eleven countries, including Australia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom; it has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide as of 2013 according to International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.[73]

See also

References
  1. Mitchell, Tony (2002). Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA. Wesleyan University Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-8195-6502-0. Retrieved 27 November 2012.
  2. Whiteley, Sheila; Bennett, Andy; Hawkins, Stan (2004). Music, Space And Place: Popular Music And Cultural Identity. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-7546-5574-9. Retrieved 27 November 2012.
  3. Reighley, Kurt B. (January 2000). "Peace Orchestra". CMJ New Music Monthly. No. 77. ISSN 1074-6978.
  4. "Local Groove Does Good: The Story Of Trip-Hop's Rise From Bristol". npr.org.
  5. Cinquemani, Sal (2 November 2002). "Slant Magazine Music Review: DJ Shadow: Endtroducing..." Slantmagazine. Slantmagazine.com. Retrieved 24 September 2010.
  6. "Trip-hop | music". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
  7. Trip-Hop Electronic » Electronica » Trip-Hop. "Explore: Trip-Hop". AllMusic. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  8. James Hannaham (17 April 2008). "Did Portishead kill trip hop?". salon.com.
  9. "Feature / When Bristol music went 'Out of the Comfort Zone'". Epigram.org.uk. 20 April 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  10. Andersen, Ragnhild Brøvig (September 2005). "Groove in trip-hop music" (PDF). UIO.
  11. "Massive Attack | Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  12. "Martina Topley-Bird | Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  13. "Sneaker Pimps | Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  14. "The 10 best trip hop tracks, according to Nouvelle Vague's Marc Collin". Dummymag.com. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  15. "moon-palace.de" Tricky web Site. Tricky covered "Tattoo" (a pre-trip-hop song of Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1983) for the opening track of his second album Nearly God in 1996
  16. "Inflightdata.com" Archived 13 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine Massive Attack sampled and covered "Metal Postcard" of Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1997 on the movie soundtrack The Jackal
  17. Tricky site "The Lovecats" by Cure, covered by Tricky
  18. "inflightdata.com – massive attack discography – tune info + lyrics – man next door". Inflightdata.com. Archived from the original on 2 May 2008.
  19. "Siouxsie Sioux". RocknFolk.com. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
  20. Dombal, Ryan. "Folk-Jazz Icon John Martyn, R.I.P." Pitchfork. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  21. Andersen, Ragnhild Brøvig. "Groove in trip-hop music" (PDF). University of Oslo. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  22. Michaelangelo Matos (25 August 2011). "Genre busting: the origin of music categories". theguardian.com.
  23. Pemberton, Andy (June 1994). "Trip Hop". Mixmag.
  24. Rick Snoman (10 September 2012). The Dance Music Manual. CRC Press. p. 294. ISBN 9781136115585.
  25. "The story of the 'Bristol Sound' | British Council". Britishcouncil.org.il. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  26. Wheaton, RJ (2001). Portishead's Dummy. Continuum. p. 14. ISBN 1441194495.
  27. "Red Lines: Bristol, England". Red-lines.co.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  28. "On-U Sound In The Area - Mark Stewart / Maffia biography". Skysaw.org. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  29. SPIN September 1987. Books.google.com. September 1987. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
  30. Ankeny, Jason. "Massive Attack - Music Biography, Credits and Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  31. "Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone". The British Library. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  32. Service (clouddataservice.co.uk), Cloud Data. "Features". Honest Ulsterman. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  33. Pemberton, Andy (June 1994). "Trip Hop". Mixmag.
  34. Cragg, Michael (5 July 2013). "Björk's Debut: celebrating 20 years of innovation". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  35. "Debut Turns 20". StereoGum.com. 3 July 2013. Retrieved 23 September 2014.
  36. "Bjork's 'Debut' Turns 20: Backtracking". Idolator.com. 12 July 2013. Retrieved 23 September 2014.
  37. Zercoe, Cole (21 November 2011). "Second Look: Bjork – Homogenic". Beats per Minute. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  38. Rogers, Jude (24 August 2019). "'Dummy wasn't a chillout album. Portishead had more in common with Nirvana'". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  39. Oxley, Macon (1 November 2015). "Mercury Winners : Portishead 'Dummy' (1995)". Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  40. "Tricky comeback makes for trip-hop trilogy". Guardian. 9 May 2008. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  41. "Top Songs of 1997". Q101 Chicago Alternative. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  42. Thomas, Stephen (21 November 1965). "Björk - Music Biography, Credits and Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  43. Phares, Heather (13 June 1995). "Post - Björk : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  44. Phares, Heather (22 September 1997). "Homogenic - Björk : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  45. Liu, Marian (28 October 2008). "Anomie Belle brings politically conscious trip hop to the Tractor Sunday". The Seattle Times.
  46. "Second Person". The Independent. 23 October 2002. p. 12.
  47. "Trent Reznor's How to Destroy Angels Premiere First Track". Spinner. 4 May 2010. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
  48. "Sputnik Music Review". Sputnikmusic. 27 February 2005. Retrieved 27 November 2012.
  49. "Kylie Minogue – Impossible Princess (album review)". Sputnikmusic. 17 July 2009. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  50. Since acknowledging her capabilities for sensuality on the album "Janet," Miss Jackson uses "The Velvet Rope" to explore her sexuality, including obsession, frustration and even coy allusions to sexual preference, layering her lyrics with fashionable trip-hop beats, overt sampling and trademark grooves. Elita Bradley (17 September 1998). "Ushering back Janet Jackson 'Velvet Rope' singer due for another show; Pearl Jam also on tap". The Washington Times. p. M.2. ISSN 0732-8494.
  51. "Kylie Minogue: Impossible Princess – Music Review". Slant Magazine. 19 November 2003. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  52. Thomas, Stephen (3 March 1998). "Ray of Light – Madonna". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 16 October 2011. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  53. Rob Sheffield (2 April 1998). "Ray Of Light Album Reviews". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  54. Phares, Heather. "Debut – Björk". AllMusic. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  55. Phares, Heather (13 June 1995). "Post – Björk". AllMusic. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  56. Phares, Heather (22 September 1997). "Homogenic – Björk". AllMusic. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  57. "Radiohead – OK Computer (album review)". Sputnikmusic. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  58. Deruty, Emmanuel; Tardieu, Damien (3 February 2014). "About Dynamic Processing in Mainstream Music". Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. 62 (1/2): 42–55. doi:10.17743/jaes.2014.0001. ISSN 1549-4950.
  59. "Biography". TripHop-Music.com. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 28 May 2015.
  60. Tim DiGravina (12 June 2001). "Simple Things – Zero 7 : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  61. O'Brien, Jon. "Like Drawing Blood – Gotye : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  62. Azpiri, Jon. "Zion I – Music Biography, Credits and Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  63. Bush, John. "Dub Pistols – Music Biography, Credits and Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  64. "Kate Havnevik: Me EP Album Review and US Tour Dates". MuuMuse. 11 November 2009.
  65. Huey, Steve (23 May 2000). "Deltron 3030 – Deltron 3030 : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  66. M.F. DiBella (6 November 2001). "Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By – Lovage, Nathaniel Merriweather : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  67. Bush, John (7 November 2000). "Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars – Fatboy Slim : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  68. Bush, John (9 February 2010). "Heligoland – Massive Attack : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  69. "AllMusic Review". Retrieved 7 November 2012.
  70. Cooper, Sean. "DJ Shadow – Music Biography, Credits and Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  71. Phares, Heather (10 July 2012). ">> - Beak> : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  72. Sheffield, Rob (30 January 2012). "Born To Die – Album Reviews – Rolling Stone". Rolling Stone. Wenner Media. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  73. "IFPI Digital Music Report 2013" (PDF). IFPI.org. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.