Genre story · Experimental
Trip-Hop
Slowed hip-hop rhythms and deep bass given room for exposed voices, dub techniques and unexpected samples.
Trip-hop became a familiar term for part of the British Electronic and Hip-Hop underground during the first half of the 1990s. Bristol was particularly important. The Wild Bunch sound-system network, Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky brought reggae, soul, hip-hop and electronic production into very different recording practices. The name arrived after much of this music had already begun developing, and some of its best-known creators were uncomfortable with how broadly critics applied it.
A beat with more room around it
The drum pattern may move slowly and deliberately while samples, vinyl noise and a heavily weighted bass line occupy the space around a singer. Portishead used sharply edited, film-associated textures and Beth Gibbons's exposed vocals; Massive Attack worked through a wider array of collaborators and reggae-informed grooves. Tricky often let a voice almost disappear into the rhythm. The differences between these records are part of the genre's story.
Not Bristol alone
Bristol's importance is real, but the sound also drew from wider Black British music, Jamaican sound systems and American hip-hop. DJ Shadow developed another, largely instrumental approach in the United States. Trip-Hop is better understood as a specific 1990s crossing than as the name for every downtempo electronic track.
Essential recordings
- 1991Massive AttackBlue LinesA foundational Bristol release.
- 1994PortisheadDummyDramatic songcraft and inventive sample-based arrangements.
- 1995TrickyMaxinquayeHarsher, more fragmented vocal and rhythm ideas.