A form of 20th-century club dance music. It owes part of its sound to hip hop, although it is considerably slower, generally using lugubrious, loping 4/4 rhythms, and also takes in influences from electro, jazz and techno. Early trip hop from 1994 was heavily based on hip hop, with artists such as RPM, La Funk Mob and DJ Shadow manipulating hip hop beats with scratching and sampling. The following year, the sound developed further and, with the advent of artists such as Tricky and Portishead, became more song- than sound-based. Instrumentation tended to be sparse: keyboards and percussion were common, but a string section, guitars or a DJ less so. There was an emphasis on the bass line, either electronically generated or from a bass guitar, and on the slowed-down hip hop rhythms. It was frequently repetitive, riff-based and in the minor key, and also differed from earlier trip hop in that it used vocalists, frequently both rappers and singers. The groove-based Protection by Massive Attack, Portishead's song-based eponymous début album and Maxinquaye by Tricky, which mixed both approaches, are the three albums that best define the style. The term itself soon became despised by those labelled with it, and the core of artists from whom the phrase had been coined developed a less generic sound, arguably to rid themselves of the tag. However, it continued to influence mainstream pop music, particularly through its rhythms and tempos, until the end of the 1990s.
WILL FULFORD-JONES