Trip-hop

SOME, but not all, trip-hop bands are worth exploring.

My suggestion for you would be to pick up the following two CDs:

1) Massive Attack - Mezzanine
2) Portishead - Portishead
and if you really like them, pick up this:
3) Tricky - Maxinquaye

"Mezzanine" is three things all at one: sexy, dark as hell, and claustrophobic. It's menacing, erie, and "shawody". COncerning Massive Attack, they have but 4 albums, and the first two are probably best avoided (as they're more "hip" than "trip"). Anyway, "Mezz" is close to Antimatter but darker...seriously. Both female & male vocals, with some "lightly whispered" quasi-rapping (trust me, it's not rap as we know it).

Portishead are probably the most "musical" of any trip-hop band, featuring both electronics AND live instruments (guitars in every song). Their 2nd album (only two so far, new one this year) is, by far, the more powerful of the 2, IMO. ALL female vocals only - the immortal Beth Gibbons!
My Dying Bride covered one of their tracks - "Roads" - from the first Portishead album, "Dummy".
 
Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own
Future Sound of London - Dead Cities and Lifeforms
 
NAD said:
Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own
Future Sound of London - Dead Cities and Lifeforms
Not to be impolite, but Chemical Brothers are defintiely not trip-hop. Trip-hop generally has slower beats, very hip-hop oriented, with organic sounding instruments sometimes layered on top.

Chemical Bros. is more like heavy rock-influenced techno. I've never thought of FSL as being trip-hop, but I can see how you would call them that.
 
Honestly I really have no idea what exactly constitutes trip-hop, I looked up FSOL and Chemical Bros. on http://www.allmusic.com and they both had "trip-hop" in their description. To me all this type of music falls under "electronica." :lol:

Either way, I have always recommended FSOL to later period Ulver fans. :)
 
Trip-hop on Perdition City? Barely. Did you mean Themes....?

Anyway, Portihead and Massive Attack are great. Tricky used to be pretty good, now he's a whore. Everyone should know Antimatter by now. The first Hooverphonic CD (A New Stereophonic Sound Spactacular) is fucking brilliant. Best trip-hop album ever. Everything after that became more crap sounding though, more like hip-pop then onto pure pop, but the new sound worked pretty well on their second album. Nice, but simple, orchestra backing them as well. Lamb is tolorable. Umm.... that should get you started.

As for some non trip-hop that influenced Ulver's sound, try Coil, Autechre, DJ Spooky and some old Prodigy. If you want to hear some awesome jazz, try out Dave Brubeck.
 
Coil are amazing and in my opinion it's even closer to the latest Ulver than FSOL. Great band, unfortunately all their cds that arrive here are imported and their prices are awfully high.
 
I can also advise you to get "souvenirs" from The Gathering. This last album of them is more "trip rock" than trip hop but there's some trip hop tunes in some songs.
Oh, and there's this duet with Trickster G on the last song of the album. It's a stunning song ! You might all get this album :)
 
Souvenirs is indeed an amazing album, one of their best along with How To Measure A Planet in my opinion. Although not trip-hop in musical terms, it has a similar atmosphere... We'll see how the new songs work in a live next sunday :D :D
 
Kveldssanger said:
Souvenirs is indeed an amazing album, one of their best along with How To Measure A Planet in my opinion. Although not trip-hop in musical terms, it has a similar atmosphere... We'll see how the new songs work in a live next sunday :D :D
I've seen them last saturday in Paris and i can tell you the new songs live rocks !! Most of the new songs are much more powerfull live, and their playlist for this tour is boss!
They'll do some surprise as well, but i wont tell you, you'll see by yourself on sunday! :)
Have fun there!
 
Goddamnit. I've only seen The Gathering play one all too short show almost 4 years ago in Philadelphia. The odds of them coming back to the states now is practically zero with only a small distro deal over here. Damn you Century Media! Look at what you've done.

I seriously wish Century Media would just tank already. All of their big selling bands seem to be gone and now they're trying to make subpar shit like Shadow's Fall into something big. It's a joke.