Oh brutha trip-hop, where art thou? As the ’90s found its footing, so did an upstart subgenre that found its roots in the slangy underbelly of Bristol, England.
The enthusiastic and hyperbolic U.K. music press called the dubby, down-tempo electronic music trip-hop, after its druggy neo-hip-hop influences that found inspiration in garage (British hip-hop) and ambient electronic.
“We’ve never made dance music,” said Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, a founding member of pioneering trip-hop outfit Massive Attack, which plays the Fillmore tonight, only the band’s second American show in eight years. “It’s always been for the head – not the feet.”
Soon that early-’90s trickle had become a swell, with acts such as Portishead, Tricky, DJ Shadow and Morcheeba releasing their distinctive interpretations of the music. And suddenly it was a legitimate movement, one that had captured a generation’s zeitgeist and moved music production forward.
But then it abruptly stopped. Not the music, but the the seemingly endless creativity and envelope-pushing. Trip-hop’s peak came in 1997-
98 with the celebration of DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing …,” Portishead’s eponymous sophomore record and Massive Attack’s era-defining “Mezzanine.” Then the subgenre went from innovative music to elevator music, the preferred soundtrack for restaurants and lounges everywhere, reducing what was once high art to a white noise meant to be talked over.
“Trip-hop did become that martini-drinking, posh-nightclub kind of thing,” said Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens, half of the Denver-based atmospheric electronic duo george&caplin, which records for Beta-lactam Ring Records. “I think it got so watered down and became more about the female vocals rather than emphasizing its hip-hop origins. A lot of those albums were dark – that spooky, phantom hip-hop feel, and then all of the sudden it became all glossy vocals and R&Bish.”
Trip-hop lost its vision when it lost that sense of danger. With standards such as Massive Attack’s “Safe From Harm,” Tricky’s “Broken Homes” and even Portishead’s “All Mine,” you never quite knew what was around the corner. The music was never as erratic as some of the more perplexing underground electronic subgenres. Trip-hop’s beats and vocals were smooth and together. Yet still the music expertly brought forth an impending sense of doom via subtler methods: Gradual builds, tight production, foreboding bass lines, more expansive effects, intoxicating vocals and frustratingly vague lyrics.
Trip-hop always supported a thriving underground. Groups such as Purple Penguin and Red Snapper walked that line of acid jazz, trip-
hop and down-tempo breaks with an impressive dexterity. Much of the action was centered around Bristol, home to Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky, who sharpened his chops in rap group the Wild Bunch and on Massive Attack’s early records.
“There’s always been something special going on down in Bristol,” said Massive Attack’s Marshall. “It’s quite removed from London, and what’s so great is that it’s beautiful and you’re out in the country. There was no need for us to live in London because we’ve always been able to do it all in Bristol.”
Trip-hop had its poppier side, too – the Sneaker Pimps happily exploited it with the single “Becoming X,” as did Morcheeba, the Supreme Beings of Leisure and others. Much of that sprouted when the musicians realized the commercial potential of their product, which was one of the first successful electronic music imports into a then rock-dominated United States.
Then came the dreaded lounge movement. As lounges regained popularity in the mid-to-late ’90s, they needed the proper soundtrack – or score, rather, as the music had to be something that stylishly faded to the background. And they found that in the easier, lazier, less interesting side of trip-hop, which some would argue is not really trip-hop at all.
These lounges and bars didn’t want the darkness of an “Inertia Creeps,” a seminal Massive Attack song that features an ominous male baritone half-panting his way through a sexy track. They preferred a simple female vocal that presented no danger and required no attention.
That was how Thievery Corporation went from its smart 1997 record “Sounds From the Thievery Hi-Fi” to the more generic, worldbeat-influenced “The Richest Man in Babylon” in only five years.
While that seemed like an obvious devolution, some might also call it evolution.
“Once (trip-hop) got labeled by the media, then there’s only so much you can do,” said george&caplin’s Stevens. “It might not be that the artists themselves failed, but the media failed them. Once it became so genrefied, people expected something very particular.”
Parameters are necessary evils in music criticism, but even when you disregard the term trip-hop and focus on it basic elements – moody hip-hop, apocalyptic down-tempo electronic production, precarious aesthetics – you’re still not going to find a quality record made in the last eight years. Massive Attack, formed in 1987 out of the ashes of the Wild Bunch, was once an originator, now an anachronism.
At least the band’s legacy is intact. Marshall is back after a hiatus spent raising his children, and while his group hasn’t moved on – the last two Massive Attack records are awful, including a bore of a score to the film “Unleashed” – others have. DJ Shadow has moved beyond trip-hop with his post-“Endtroducing …” projects, and they succeed as much as if not more than his previous work, only in a different section of the record store.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
Massive Attack
TRIP-HOP|Fillmore Auditorium, 8 tonight|$35|
Ticketmaster outlets, ticketmaster.com or 303-830-8497.
