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The 20 Best Trip-Hop Albums of All Time

We handpicked 20 of genre’s best albums, homing in on those that remain within the scope of trip-hop’s original sound and spirit.

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Massive Attack
Photo: Virgin Records

The term “trip-hop” was first coined in 1994, when a writer at the dance music bible Mixmag used it to describe DJ Shadow’s ambitious single “In/Flux.” The seeds of this new genre—the U.K.’s answer to America’s burgeoning hip-hop movement—can be traced back to the late ’80s and early ’90s in Bristol, a bustling college town in South West England where pioneers of the so-called “Bristol sound,” including Smith & Mighty, Portishead, and Massive Attack all got their start.

Bristol is one of England’s warmest and sunniest cities—ironic given the dark, gloomy attributes often associated with trip-hop. Maybe it’s for that reason that artists like Tricky have rejected the categorization altogether, and by the turn of the millennium the genre had already splintered off in myriad directions—drum n’ bass, illbient, and electronica, to name but a few—and its influence can still be heard in pop, hip-hop, and electronic music today.

Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, widely considered to be the first official trip-hop album, marked its 30th anniversary earlier this month. To celebrate, we’ve handpicked 20 of genre’s greatest albums, homing in (with only a few exceptions) on those that remain predominantly within the scope of trip-hop’s original sound and spirit. That means the majority of these albums were released during the genre’s ’90s heyday, as a self-imposed two-album-per-artist limit kept later efforts like Portishead’s Third, which dropped in 2009, from making the cut. Sal Cinquemani

Editor’s Note: Listen to a playlist of some of our favorite tracks from the albums on this list on Spotify.

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Flying Away

20. Smoke City, Flying Away

What the music press originally termed “trip-hop” always had a loosely defined set of signifiers: sample manipulation, seraphic female vocals, a tasteful fusion of border-crossing influences that hark back to the genre’s genesis in the multi-cultural milieu of Bristol. Smoke City puts a samba twist on the genre, singer Nina Miranda peppering the beguiling downtempo of their 1997 debut, Flying Away, with spoken Portuguese and French and the occasional irrepressible laugh. Throughout, bossa nova standards receive a moody, futuristic update, like something out of a Wachowskian vision of Rio de Janeiro. Smoke City’s otherworldly rendition of “Águas de Março” is drenched in dub-style reverb, and the sample-driven “Mr. Gorgeous (And Miss Curvaceous)” flips the voyeurism of “The Girl from Ipanema” on its head: “All alone, our Miss Curvaceous/Back at her place finds her bed too spacious/And as she passes her own reflection, sighs ‘ahh.’” Sophia Ordaz



Krush

19. DJ Krush, Krush

While visiting a friend at Berklee College of Music in the late ’90s, I heard what sounded like an alien breakbeat coming from a dorm room down the hall. I peeked in at the girl sitting on the floor in the dark and asked what she was listening to. “DJ Krush,” she replied and coolly offered me the blunt pinched between her fingers. Back in New York, I spent the next several days digging through the bins at a record store on St. Marks until I found Krush’s Mo’ Wax debut. I never did figure out which of the Japanese producer’s songs I’d heard that night, but it could have been any one of the instrumental tracks that comprise the majority of 1994’s Krush, from “Roll & Tumble,” with its languid hip-hop loop and skittery jazz piano, to the horn-infused “On the Dub-ble,” to the spacey “Into the Water,” with its Prince-esque guitar licks and steady bassline submerged deep in the murky mix. Cinquemani

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Smokers Delight

18. Nightmares on Wax, Smokers Delight

On Smokers Delight, Nightmares on Wax’s most trip-hop-infused effort, Leeds producer George Evelyn proffers comedown music for the bleary-eyed morning after. A sample from Quincy Jones’s “Summer in the City,” compressed into the periphery of “Nights Introlude”—a loose rewrite of his debut’s “Nights Interlude,” and the impetus for 1995’s Smokers Delight as a whole—welcomes the listener into NOW’s blend of roving jazz keys, dub bass, and hip-hop breakbeats. Though late-night revelers risk sobering up by the conclusion of its 75-minute runtime, the album is a hazy, delightfully heady tribute to trip-hop’s roots in Jamaican sound-system culture. Ordaz



A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular

17. Hooverphonic, A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular

By the time that Hooverphonic’s “Renaissance Affair” was licensed for a Volkswagon Beetle commercial in the year 2000, the Belgian band had already shaken up its lineup and pivoted away from the more recognizable elements of trip-hop and toward a broader, more mainstream indie- and electronic-pop sound. Even their 1996 debut, A New Stereophonic Spectacular, refused to commit to one genre and admittedly nudged up against the coffee-shop trip-pop that would proliferate by the end of the decade. But while the album is certainly one of the more accessible offerings on this list, it’s anything but innocuous, as battering live drums and guitar are the main focus of “Nr. 9” and “Sarangi,” the vocals of which sound like they’ve been lifted from a Cocteau Twins song. And tracks like “2 Wicky,” built around a sample of Isaac Hayes’s “Walk on By,” and “Cinderella,” with its plodding single-note bass and creaky atmospherics, are quintessential examples of ’90s trip-hop. Cinquemani

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Felt Mountain

16. Goldfrapp, Felt Mountain

Released in 2000, Goldfrapp’s debut was either a signpost of trip-hop’s impending second wave or the last masterpiece to come out of a golden era that began a decade earlier. Sadly, it seems it was closer to the latter, signaling the end of the genre’s creative peak. But oh what a lofty peak Felt Mountain was. Namesake Alison Goldfrapp’s voice is at turns evocative of Shirley Bassey, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, and any number of French-pop chanteuses from the ’60s, while Will Gregory’s lush, orchestral arrangements swing effortlessly between vaudeville and something from Rosemary’s Baby. Cinquemani



Attica Blues

15. Attica Blues, Attica Blues

Named after Archie Shepp’s 1972 big-band album, Attica Blues came about after Mo’ Wax founder James Lavelle signed Charlie Park, an up-and-coming DJ who didn’t yet have an original song to his name. Park soon joined forces with producer Tony Nwachuku and singer Roba El-Essawy to explore influences such as East Coast hip-hop, classic jazz, and the rare groove records that Park’s Ghanaian mother had stockpiled. The London trio’s immersive, often-overlooked self-titled album is a collection of jazz-inflected, lo-fi downtempo that doesn’t shy away from a variety of timbres and dynamic shadings: The snaking bassline on “Atlanta” and staccato keys on “Pendulum Being” are subtly mesmeric, while the booming percussion on “Impulse” clatters like thunderclaps. On “Tender (The Final Story),” El-Essawy’s fragile alto sounds like it’s on the verge of breaking as a showstopping string arrangement takes over the mix, calling to mind the high drama of Björk’s forays into trip-hop. Spacious and multi-textured, Attica Blues is headphone music that doesn’t hesitate to mine both the minimal and the maximal. Ordaz

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A Grand Love Story

14. Kid Loco, A Grand Love Story

Among Gallic retro-futurists, Air’s Moon Safari has always gotten the most love, but Kid Loco’s A Grand Love Story not only predates that album’s release by two months, it’s every bit as lush and heady. “A Grand Love Theme” establishes the gorgeous idylls to come, with sweeping strings soaked in reverb and ringing guitar lines that flicker like distant stars. Although Burt Bacharach is a prime influence here, “Relaxin’ with Cherry” is a sundown sojourn that would fit snugly on a good mid-’70s Santana album, while “Love Me Sweet” and “She’s My Lover” split the difference between Ravi Shankar and the Velvet Underground, and “Sister Curare” shifts the city-soundtrack style of DJ Shadow’s “Midnight in a Perfect World” into a kind of melted psychedelia. As bucolic bliss-outs go, A Grand Love Story is as multi-varied and trippy as they come. Blue Sullivan



Substances

13. DJ Cam, Substances

The opening track of DJ Cam’s 1996 album Substances, “Friends and Enemies,” begins with a subterranean synth drone and a sample from Gang Starr’s “Mass Appeal,” making evident the French producer’s fundamentally hip-hop-driven approach to electronic music. Though some of its BPMs are blistering compared to the songs on, say, Portishead’s Dummy or Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, and its pensive piano leans into jazz-hop, Substances foregrounds the influence of American hip-hop on its more distinctly European offshoot. Instead of evoking the sulky, late-night atmosphere often associated with downtempo music, DJ Cam aspires for something closer to tranquility. Bengali singer Kakoli Sengupta offers a calming lullaby on the didgeridoo-backed “Meera,” and in addition to borrowing from the Golden Age of hip-hop, DJ Cam threads meditative Miles Davis samples throughout. Ordaz

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Let’s Get Killed

12. David Holmes, Let’s Get Killed

If DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. is the serious cratedigger’s ne plus ultra, then David Holmes’s Let’s Get Killed is its bouncy, playful corollary. Unlike the California-born Shadow, Holmes provides a fascinated outsider’s take on America. From his first visit to New York City at 17 came the inspiration for the majority of these 13 tracks. “Listen” sets the mood with its testimonial monologue from a city lifer enveloped by traffic, horns, and indiscernible background voices, while “My Mate Paul” sets the sonic template for much of the album: a rush of stops and starts, with drums that begin, reverse, begin again, and rumble along like a city bus. Those drums give “My Mate Paul” its fizzy life, but on the title track, the drums are an ominous rattle, aided by a creepy Taxi Driver-style monologue. Along with this surprisingly fluid use of rhythmic clatter (which also includes detours into techno and drum n’ bass) are clear signs of the future soundtrack star that Holmes would become. Sullivan



Formica Blues

11. Mono, Formica Blues

British duo Mono’s Formica Blues might, upon first listen, feel like a minor entry in the trip-hop pantheon. But producer Mark Virgo—a classically trained musician with a professional pedigree that includes collaborations with Nellee Hooper, Massive Attack, and Björk—masterfully merged Portishead’s penchant for jazz and soundtrack samples with the pop sensibility of Saint Etienne. Neither as dour as the former nor as ebullient as the latter, Mono’s music is lush and nostalgic—a pastiche of ’60s girl-group harmonies, film scores samples, and references to classical music—but also very contemporary, courtesy of trip-hop staples like turntable scratches and drum n’ bass loops. Singer Siobhan de Maré’s dreamy, unobtrusive vocals add texture and emotion to songs like the deceptively angsty “Playboys” (“I survived despite you,” she chants ad nauseam) without pulling focus from Virgo’s intricate soundscapes. Though the album’s opening track, “Life in Mono,” was a minor hit on both sides of the Atlantic (thanks, in part, to Robert De Niro’s insistence that it be included in Alfonso Cuarón’s 1998 adaptation of Great Expectations), Formica Blues sadly remains Mono’s first and only full-length release. Cinquemani

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Lamb

10. Lamb, Lamb

The music on Manchester duo Lamb’s 1996 self-titled debut is nervy, innovative, and complex—boasting shifting time signatures, stuttering machine-gun beats, and eccentric vocal turns by singer Lou Rhodes, who stretches her uniquely colorful voice over producer Andy Barlow’s tight, jazzy arrangements. As weird and alien as Lamb might sound, though, songs like “God Bless” and “Gold” are also startlingly beautiful, the frenetic noise dropping out to make room for lush, if brief, interludes (or, in the case of the instrumental “Merge,” a virtuosic trumpet solo). Drum n’ bass is a chief sonic component here, but the lumbering “Trans Fatty Acid” and the pensive “Zero” fit squarely into the trip-hop template, and the baroque “Gorecki” in particular captures the genre’s propensity for grandeur. Cinquemani



Psyence Fiction

9. Unkle, Psyence Fiction

A missive from the moment in time when Mo’ Wax was truly on top of the trip-hop world, Unkle’s Psyence Fiction was also something like the pinnacle of college-rock crossover circa 1998. It wasn’t a cohesive statement then, and it isn’t now, but returning to it a quarter-century later is not unlike unearthing a time capsule assembled by a particularly single-minded cultural ambassador (DJ Shadow, to be specific). It’s not all about the star cameos. For instance, “Bloodstain” is built on a naggingly tart guitar sample from Tom MacDonald Expose’s “Stephen’s Tune” (who? what?) that surges to an ecclesiastical climax. And “Celestial Annihilation” pays simultaneous tribute to early Detroit house alongside Bronx-born turntablism. But, ultimately, Psyence Fiction endures as a party-with-a-guest-list setlist, with Beastie Boy Mike D off in one corner spitting rhymes, Badly Drawn Boy off in another noise-jamming away, Richard Ashcroft holding court in the karaoke room, and most importantly of all, Thom Yorke enchanting night owls out on the back porch with his 2 a.m. baying at the moon. Eric Henderson

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Becoming X

8. Sneaker Pimps, Becoming X

It’s tempting to dismiss Sneaker Pimps—with their downbeat blend of loops, samples, and sullen female vocals—as simply another in a long line of copycats that emerged in the wake of the success of Portishead’s Dummy. (The perception isn’t helped by the fact that their biggest crossover hit, “6 Underground,” was remixed for radio by Nellee Hooper, a former member of the Wild Bunch, the Bristol collective that would become Massive Attack.) The rock-tinged Becoming X, however, is more akin to Portishead’s darker, more menacing self-titled second album—which would drop a whole year after Sneaker Pimps’s 1996 debut. British producers Liam Howe and Chris Corner succeeded at carving out their own grimy little hole in the trip-hop realm: Their electronic beats, gritty hip-hop loops, and snatches of film scores are, distinctly, paired with copious guitars—both acoustic and electric. Distorted guitar riffs curl and warp around the crisp breakbeats and squealing synths of the opening track, “Low Place Like Home”; they form the melodic basis for the blues-y “Post Modern Sleaze”; and they’re part of the skittery undercurrent that percolates beneath the surface of the dreamy closing track, “How Do.” For her part, singer Kelli Dayton brings a frenetic punk edge to songs like the witchy “Tesko Suicide” and “Spin Spin Sugar,” which might explain why Lowe and Corner were never able to replicate this album’s X factor after she left the group. Cinquemani



Bass Is Maternal

7. Smith & Mighty, Bass Is Maternal

Though it wasn’t officially released until 1995, Smith & Mighty’s Bass Is Maternal is truly the First of Her Name, Queen of Bristol, and Mother of Trip-Hoppers. Recorded in 1989, the songs are evenly split between what would become known as jungle, dub, and trip-hop, respectively, channeling U.K. rave culture and predicting the sounds of the next decade. The album’s influence can be heard in the beats of everyone from fellow Bristolians Massive Attack (S&M produced the group’s first single) to turntablists from across the pond like DJ Shadow. The title track practically designed the template for Lamb’s early drum-n’-bass experiments, while “Walking” excavates the lineage between the dub music pioneered by the likes of Lee “Scratch” Perry in the ’70s and the avant-garde synth-pop of the Art of Noise. As for trip-hop itself, the genre’s origins can be traced directly back to “Accept All Contracts” and “Time,” sample-heavy mash-ups that show little interest in such prosaic classification. Cinquemani

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The 10 Best Albums of 1997

6. Portishead, Portishead

Portishead’s eponymous sophomore effort, their most adventuresome and engrossing to date, confirmed the band as trip-hop’s reigning melodramatists. It begins in the throes of absolute menace, and the phantasmagoric mood is impressively sustained throughout, even during unexpectedly vampish timeouts like “All Mine.” The Old West meets sci-fi meets the jazz halls of the ’40s throughout, and of all the stars in the album’s sonic sky, none pulsate as manically and wildly as Beth Gibbons’s voice (electronically pulsated to insane effect on nearly every track, most memorably on “Half Day Closing”). The effect of these theremin-wielding space cowboys’ ploys—all that sampling, all that scratching, all that distorting—is one of danger and deception. These torch songs sound as if they’ve reached us via some alien transmission, and you spend the duration of Portishead’s relentlessly ominous running time wondering if the band comes in peace. Ed Gonzalez



The 10 Best Albums of 1998

5. Massive Attack, Mezzanine

When Massive Attack covered William DeVaughan’s immortally languorous “Be Thankful for What You Got” on Blue Lines, it was implicit that their twist on the song’s mantra was “It could all be gone tomorrow.” With the release of 1998’s Mezzanine, that worldview felt like it was being put to the test. Crunchy and embittered—whereas their previous work, however world-weary, at least carried itself with a broken sort of elegance—this pre-millennial downer lunges from one Prozac-dependent implosion to the next. Even its marquee crossover single, the 16-rpm dirge “Teardrop,” boasts what might be the all-time saddest deployment of a harpsichord in pop history. The album’s opening track, “Angel,” ruminates on its two-note bassline while a steel-trap drum loop and a chaotic guitar jangles suggest the Doors’s “The End,” and carrying that theme forward, its title track opens with what might as well be a sample of Goblin’s score for Dawn of the Dead. Somehow simultaneously relentless and somnambulistic, Mezzanine leaves little room to breathe, even less room to escape, and absolutely no protection. Henderson

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The 10 Best Albums of 1995

4. Tricky, Maxinquaye

Tricky’s 1995 breakthrough remains a uniquely evocative experience at once chill and chilling. According to singer Martina Topley-Bird (erroneously credited as Martine), the government is sending her letters, but does the government even exist? In a time that’s seemingly gone, where uncertainty reigns supreme, armies are recruiting and the landscape of Earth—and mind—is riddled with schisms. Having given up on a civilization that sounds as if it has barely survived an apocalypse (nuclear warfare, perhaps, maybe even zombies—it’s all the same), Tricky Kid and his muse trudge through industrial playgrounds, not only lost in thought, but suffocated by it, victims of resentment and regret, banging their feet against pipes and bopping their heads as they turn corners, afraid of the danger that awaits them. These sad sacks fear the planet’s perils, from heartache to racism, but they refuse to let you see them sweat. They funk their way through an aftermath of discontent, and though they’re angry and cynical, they always seem to see a light at the end of their rusted memories and nightmares. Gonzalez



The 10 Best Albums of 1991

3. Massive Attack, Blue Lines

Before trip-hop became trip-hop, it was Bristol hip-hop, forefronted by the English town’s most famous collective, Massive Attack, and their 1991 debut, Blue Lines. The album took American soul music and filtered it through a patently European dance perspective, infusing James Brown samples and singer Shara Nelson’s cool yet soulful vocals with languid reggae and dub rhythms. With its double-digit BPMs, Blue Lines proved that dance music didn’t have to pound you into submission. More importantly, it offered an alternative to American hip-hop, with Horace Andy, Tony Bryan, and an artist then known as Tricky Kid commenting on the universal trifecta of love, drugs, and…encroaching capitalism. Cinquemani

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The 10 Best Albums of 1996

2. DJ Shadow, Endtroducing…..

Ever since Edison invented the phonograph, a loud faction of musicians and critics has claimed that new recording technologies will rob music of its aura and obliterate the spontaneous beauty of performance. I want to send everyone who’s entertained such arguments a copy of 1996’s Endtroducing….., invite them to dwell in its unpredictable space of loops and samples and observe how masterfully DJ Shadow repurposes his source material in service of his own creative vision. When sampling from music by Björk, T. Rex, Metallica, and KRS-One, even the score to Blade Runner, he favors tones and textures over familiar melodies, and in that sense, it’s the recordings themselves, rather than songs, that are his true medium. Endtroducing….. is an experiment in hip-hop animism, with DJ Shadow drawing out the living essence of his record collection and channeling it in remarkable new directions. Matthew Cole



The 10 Best Albums of 1994

1. Portishead, Dummy

In the wake of its dramatic, sinister follow-up, Portishead, and 2009’s stark, often dissonant Third, it’s easy to forget just how lush, unassuming, even gentle Portishead’s 1994 debut was. Even “Nobody loves me, it’s true!,” the hook of the album’s biggest hit, “Sour Times,” is less histrionic than it first seems, resolving with an expectedly calm and collected “…not like you do.” A mix of tortured torch songs and noirish soundscapes in which Hammond organ, theremin, brass, hip-hop loops, and turntable scratches all figure prominently, Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons drew on a century of popular music—from the Velvet Underground to John Barry, from blues to jazz—to create a record that, at the time, sounded at once vintage, modern, and timeless, and like nothing anyone had ever heard before. Cinquemani

4 Comments

  1. Thanks for this list,
    Can you please share your thoughts about this album please : close the door (2008) from the group Terranova

    Thanks

  2. Bravo. I’ve been in love with trip hop for quite a long time and still took away a lot from this enjoyable read.

  3. No Morcheeba? Who’ve outlived every trip hop band to date?? Olive’s second album was a classic. But it’s your list 😊😊

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