Trip hop and downtempo dominate my morning drive lately.
There's been a lot of OT at the dayjob (not complaining) since the spring, but the weird hours, more client emergencies as of late, plus a busy personal schedule means my mornings are a little sleepier than usual.
Previously I'd sit in the truck in the morning and start a podcast, but over the past couple of weeks the thought of listening to conversations at the start of the day makes my skin crawl.
So I drove around in silence for a day or two, but the contsant conversation my brain has with itself was just as irritating as I imagined a podcast would be, so I decided to go back to a bunch of mostly familiar trip hop.
For years I've kept a spreadsheet of the albums that I've listened to, and more recently started keeping notes to remember my impressions in the moment because I realized it's not enough to just know whether or not I've actually listened to something.
Whatt follows are albums that I enjoyed, and some thoughts about them expanded from the notes I made while listening to them.
Dummy - Portishead
[ Listen to Dummy on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music or YouTube ]
I missed the boat here; it's good, and I'll give it another listen in the future, but I think I came to it too late for any sort of wow factor in 2024.
When it was released in 1994 I was busy listening to all sorts of rock music non-stop and I wouldn't have been able to comprehend anything like this for at least another four or five years.
When trip hop finally started to hook me it was with...
Becoming X - Sneaker Pimps
[ Listen to Becoming X on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music & YouTube ]
I want to say that I saw snippets from the 6 Underground video on commercials for music compilations, and probably saw the video a bunch on MuchMusic at the time.
Kelli Ali has a distinct look and voice, and although Becoming X was compared to Dummy, with both bands playing music of a similar genre and both fronted by women, this album impressed me a little bit more while sitting in traffic than the former, with many of the tracks hooking me in seconds with the percussion in the intro.
Checking the Wikipedia article, I was surprised to discover this is her only appearance on a Sneaker Pimps album, and also that the release with the above art is a different version than the original, with a different order of tracks, and remixes of the original songs.
If I knew this as teenager I'd have pulled out all of the stops and hustled my way to get a hold of all of the different versions of this album—although I prefer the above version with the band on the front, the original is also cool.
Maxinquaye - Tricky
[ Listen to Maxinquaye on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music & YouTube ]
If I close my eyes and imagine the sound of trip hop, Sneaker Pimps and Tricky are the first thing to mind.
Referring to my spreadsheet, there was a giant hole where this album should have been.
I thought it was an error.
I checked my old notes, and anywhere else I'd have written anything about Maxinquaye because I'm very familiar with most of the tracks, but it looks like I had never given it a front to back listen before.
Cool.
Tricky stood out after I started listening to a lot of hip hop, and made me reframe what electronic music could be.
The creation of this album is fascinating to read about; even though he was in Massive Attack, he had no concept of musical norms like pitch and time signatures. His producer recalls being given samples of songs in different keys and putting them together by de-tuning one, which give many of the songs their unrushed feel.
There's a low-tempo groove throughout the entire album, borrowing from dub and ambient music but also rock and punk themes.
DJ Kicks - Nightmares On Wax
[ Listen to DJ-Kicks: Nightmares On Wax on Apple Music ]
Pivoting to some downtempo now.
DJ-Kicks is a long-running series of DJ mix albums by the German label !K7 Records, novel at the time because no one had produced mixes for listening at home.
I enjoy most of these releases and they smartened me up to a bunch of artists that would never have been on my radar otherwise.
Nightmares on Wax wasn't one of them.
Smoker's Delight is an essential album, but I've listened to it a lot and I wanted something less familiar.
This is a good mix, easily front to back, and one I'll go back to over and over again.
Le Parc - Tangerine Dream
[ Listen to Le Parc on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music & YouTube ]
According to old notes, I've listened to this album at least twice before, which I had no recollection of.
Which is why I keep notes.
The track names stood out, and checking the Wikipedia article each song is inspired by, and named after a particular park around the world.
It's more up-tempo than I expected after reading that.
That said, when I think of a park, muddy leaves and trees are what come to mind—I'm often awed, but almost never inspired by nature. Any soundscape Tangerine Dream would contribute to a park is a definite improvement.
The track inspired by Los Angeles (Le Parc) appeared as the theme to Street Hawk, basically Knight Rider on a motorcycle:
And the track Central Park (New York) was used in Diamond Ninja Force:
Maybe it's just the parks around me that are boring?