trip hop

Trip-hop pioneer Tricky, of Massive Attack fame, talks with Wired.com about becoming a musician and about how he views his naive approach as important to his unique sound.

via wired

MPC-Samples.com has introduced a new construction loop pack, Ambient Hip Hop Constructions.

Ambient Hip Hop Constructions is a collection of 20 melodic, beat-driven songs, broken down into their constituent looped elements such as drums, keys, bass, and synth parts. Each element is looped to a specified BPM (tempos range from 70 bpm 120 bpm), and keyed to allow mixing and matching between themes. All individual drum hits are also included.

This product has been created for producers into ‘abstract’ and melodic hip hop styles such as trip hop, film score, electronica, downbeat and chill out. Read more…

From its name, you might think Älymystö was a shelving unit from Ikea – but it’s Aktually a Finnish band that combines “elements of ambient, noise, industrial, triphop and god knows what in the mix.”

They’ve put up their latest album as a free Creative Commons download:

Our first album Atomgrad is now a free download (direct & torrent) and copying is highly encouraged, as are comments.

Direct Download HERE.
Torrent HERE.

via Warren Ellis

Here’s the latest Portishead video, for The Rip from their latest album, Third.

Neither the video nor the song do much for me, and they seem to have left what was good about their sound behind. Has Portishead jumped the shark?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Morcheeba has a trippy but polished downtempo sound that makes their music danceable but also perfect chill-out music.

The band is made up of two UK brothers, Paul and Ross Godfrey, who cover the production and electronics, and Skye Edwards on vocals. Their music often has a retro sound, with low-fi samples and traditional blues lyrics. Their production is often complex, but never obscures the vocals.

Edwards voice is smokey and soulful, and her beautiful presence is a big part of the bands’ appeal. Her laid back but strong singing lends an immediate sensuousness to the often languid songs. It’s hard to imagine Morcheeba’s music without Edward’s vocals.

The Godfrey brothers create downtempo trip-hop tracks that draw on many influences, mostly retro. They combine looped beats with traditional soul instruments like sax, wah guitar and hammond organ. Their production style incorporates dub influences, with tape echo used tastefully to create loop effects.

The combination of Edwards’ dead-on vocals and the chilled electronica vibes update the soul ballad style.

Morcheeba has six major releases:

• 1996 – Who can you trust?
• 1998 – Big Calm
• 2000 – Fragments of Freedom
• 2001 – Back to Mine
• 2002 – Charango
• 2003 – Parts of the Process