Trip hop

Trip hop
Stylistic origins	Electronic music breakbeat soul acid house hip hop dub reggae funk jazz R&B ambient downtempo chill-out psychedelia lounge minimalism alternative rock
Cultural origins	Early 1990s Bristol, United Kingdom
Typical instruments	Keyboards (especially Rhodes) synthesizer samplers brass turntables strings guitar bass drums percussion saxophone flute
Subgenres
Illbient – Post-trip hop
Regional scenes
United Kingdom, United States
Other topics
Bristol underground scene – Industrial hip-hop – Breakbeat – Nu jazz

Trip hop is a genre of electronic music that originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol. Deriving from later idioms of acid house, the term was first used by the British music media and press as a way to describe the more experimental variant of breakbeat emerging from the Bristol Sound scene, which contained influences of soul, funk and jazz. It has been described as "Europe's alternative choice in the second half of the '90s", and "a fusion of hip hop and electronica until neither genre is recognisable". Trip hop music fuses several styles and has much in common with other genres; it has several qualities similar to ambient music, and its drum-based breakdowns share characteristics with hip hop. It also contains elements of R&B, dub and house, as well as other electronic music. Trip hop can be highly experimental.

History

1990s

According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, the term "trip-hop" was coined in 1989, though it first appeared in print in June 1994; Andy Pemberton, a music journalist writing for Mixmag, used it to describe Mo Wax Records Artist (U.K.) R.P.M and (American) DJ Shadow's "In/Flux" single.

In Bristol, once one of the most important ports in the Atlantic slave-trade and as of 2012 among Britain's most racially diverse cities, 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. 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". 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, the golden era of the soundsystem began to end. The Wild Bunch signed a record deal and evolved into Massive Attack, 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.

Another influence came from Gary Clail's Tackhead soundsystem. Clail often worked with former The Pop Group singer Mark Stewart. 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. Produced by Adrian Sherwood, the music combined hiphop 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.

Early to mid-1990s: Trip hop's mainstream breakthrough

Massive Attack, a British trip hop group that helped bring the genre to mainstream success in the 1990s

Massive Attack's first album Blue Lines was released in 1991 to huge success in the UK. 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. 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.

The term trip hop was coined that year, but not in reference to anything on the Massive Attack albums. In the June 1994 issue of UK magazine Mixmag, music journalist Andy Pemberton used it 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. 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. The album, although rooted in the 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. 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.

1994 and 1995 saw trip hop near the peak of its popularity, with artists such as Howie B, Naked Funk 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 released their debut album Dummy. A trio fronted by singer Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley. Their background differed from Massive Attack in many ways: one of Portishead's primary influences was 1960s and 1970s film soundtrack LPs. 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, 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. 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. 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.

The London-based band Archive began as trip hop, before developing into progressive rock, employing elements of both hip hop and orchestral music with the album Controlling Crowds (Part I–III and Part IV).

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

Post-trip hop

Björk, an artist who has often incorporated trip hop in her music

After the initial success of trip hop in the mid-1990s, notable "post-trip-hop" artists include Bowery Electric, Esthero, Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, Anomie Belle, 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.

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

Various prominent artists and groups, such as Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Björk, and Radiohead, have also been influenced by the genre. Trip hop has spawned several subgenres, including Illbient, (dub-based trip hop which combines ambient and industrial hip hop).

Trip hop in the 2000s

"A Man Who Went Missing" by Kirk Pearson demonstrates some of trip hop's most prominent characteristics: an electronic drum kit, downtempo female vocals and a sequential bass pattern.

Trip hop continued to influence notable artists in the 2000s. Norwegian avantgarde band Ulver incorporated trip hop in their ambient/electronic 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. Zero 7's album Simple Things, and in particular, its lead single "Destiny", was regarded highly by underground listeners and achieved significant popularity. 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. Hip hop groups Zion I and the Dub Pistols also displayed heavy trip hop influence. Norwegian singer and songwriter, Kate Havnevik, is a classically trained musician, but also incorporates trip hop into her work.
In the late 2000s, French-born American singer-composer LiLi Roquelin infused trip hop sounds with her piano compositions, especially with her award-winning song "I Saw You".

Producers

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, 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, 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, was his most commercially successful release. French musician and producer Kid Loco has produced and composed quite a few legendary trip hop albums since 1996 up till today.

Trip hop in the 2010s

Major notable releases include Massive Attack's Heligoland and Dutch's A Bright Cold Day in 2010.

How To Destroy Angels released a self-titled EP in 2010, and a full album Welcome Oblivion in 2013.

DJ Shadow's The Less You Know, The Better was released in 2011.

Geoff Barrow's album titled ">>" was released in 2012.

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

Tricky released his tenth studio album False Idols on 23 May 2013, followed by Adrian Thaws on 8 September 2014.

British trip hop trio London Grammar released their debut album If You Wait on 9 September 2013 and set platinum certification by BPI.

British recording artist FKA twigs, often cited as a trip hop musician, was nominated for BBC's Sound of 2014 prize, and chosen by Spotify for their Spotlight on 2014 list. She has also been nominated for the 2014 Mercury Prize.
Award-winning recording artist LiLi Roquelin released the Album "Will You Hate the Rest Of the World or Will You Renew Your Life?" in 2010, it includes violin melodies, shuffled trip hop beats, and analog tinged pianos. In 2012 she released another full-length "Beautiful Sun" with trip hop influence, chill-out and a Portishead edge.

Musical elements

Common musical aesthetics include a bass-heavy drumbeat, often emulating the slowed breakbeat samples typical of hip hop in the 1990s, with tempos varying between 80 to 110 beats per minute. Vocals in trip hop are often 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 has collaborated with male and female singers, Tricky often features vocally in his own productions, and Chris Corner provided vocals for later albums with his group Sneaker Pimps.

Trip hop is also known for its melancholy sound. This may be partly due to the fact that several acts were inspired by post punk bands; Tricky and Massive Attack both covered and sampled songs of Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure. Tricky opened his second album Nearly God by a version of "Tattoo", a pre-trip-hop song of Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Trip hop tracks often sample Rhodes pianos, saxophones, trumpets, and flutes. Trip hop differs from hip hop in theme and overall tone. Instead of gangsta rap with its hard-hitting lyrics, trip hop offers a more aural atmospherics 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. Lendi Vexer used the Theremin in their albums in 2004 and 2007, "Suicidal adage" and "The process of disillusion" respectively.

See also

• Chill-out music
• List of electronic music genres
• List of trip hop artists

External links

• Trip hop at DMOZ
• "Trip Hop Radio" Internet radio
• "Trip-Hop" Allmusic guide essay by Sean Cooper
• "World of Trip Hop" Webpage
• Triptica - An internet Radio dedicated to Trip Hop
• NPR's history of trip hop