After a long night of daggering at Best Buy and other big box stores, sometimes you need to slow things down and just relax a little. When I need to kick back, I throw on an old friend from way back.
Allow me to introduce you to trip hop, a genre emerging out of the UK in the mid 1990s. Drawing heavily on elements of 70s jazzy soundtracks and funky soul drums, trip hop is a down tempo groove that brings in elements of turntablism and ethereal singing to create its haunting effect (big ups to Radiohead's Thom Yorke on vocals on this classic track). Amazingly for the listener, many trip hop artists are also incredibly visual artistic, and the genre has given us some of the most classic music videos of all time, like Teardrop from Massive Attack.
Other notable artists in this genre include DJ Shadow, UNKLE and my personal favourite, Portishead, who I have had on heavy rotation the past few weeks. Here are a couple more tracks from them: BAM and ZAP. Like I said, Portishead really showcases the genre's close ties to jazz, but does so in a very cool way. I've been studying to their BBC Essential Mix for a few weeks...definitely worth finding!
The song of the day goes to Portishead, and I'm happy to say that I will be covering this song with a very talented singer at an upcoming show. Enjoy
Portishead - Glory Box
While pure trip hop died out in the late 90s, luckily for us, it lives on as an inspiration for many modern artists. This is especially true in non-lyrical hip hop, with DJs like RJD2 getting the trip hop sound into the mix. You can also hear the influence of trip hop in some Kanye West songs...YEEZY. Hope you're all now thoroughly relaxed and mind blown. Check you tomorrow JM
PS: Brain Update - Last night, after crushing CompSci for 15 straight hours Brain crushed another 9 hours. Pray hard for Brain.
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