Ten trip hop albums to know

The word has a birthday and a postcode. June 1994, London, the pages of Mixmag, where Andy Pemberton wrote “trip hop” in a review of In/Flux, a DJ Shadow twelve-inch on Mo’ Wax.

DJ Shadow is Californian. So the term that would stand in for Bristol over the next decade was minted in London, about an American record, by somebody who had no particular reason to consult the people it would end up describing, and nobody in Bristol ever took to it.

Ten British records follow, from 1990 to 1998. They aren’t ranked. They sit around that one month: three before, seven after.

Listen while you read

Before there was a word for it

DJ Food, Jazz Brakes Volume 1 (Ninja Tune, zen 2, October 1990). Sixteen tracks on the LP. It’s the second thing Ninja Tune ever released, the label Coldcut had started that same year.

We can’t find it on Spotify, and the same goes for every other volume in the series.

Massive Attack, Blue Lines (Circa, WBRLP 1, 8 April 1991). Nine pieces. Read the catalogue prefix: WB stands for Wild Bunch, the Bristol sound system the group had come out of, and it will matter again at the bottom of this page.

Nightmares on Wax, A Word of Science (Warp, WARP LP4, 16 September 1991). Fourth number in Warp’s album series, out of Sheffield, three years before anyone thought to give this stuff a name.

June 1994

Then the word arrives, and inside two years it has swallowed everything with a slow drum and a heavy bass.

Geoff Barrow of Portishead, much later: “When I first heard somebody call us trip-hop, I hated it.” What they were making wasn’t trip hop at all, he says. It was British soul music. The tag got fixed to Bristol by people who lived in London.

After there was a word for it

Portishead, Dummy (Go! Beat, 22 August 1994). Two months after the review. The band is named after the town on the coast, eight miles west of Bristol.

Tricky, Maxinquaye (4th & Broadway, BRLP 610, 20 February 1995). Twelve pieces, from a man born in Bristol in January 1968 who had spent the years before this as one of Massive Attack’s early collaborators rather than as anybody’s solo act.

Smith & Mighty, Bass Is Maternal (More Rockers, ZLPKR002, 1995). Fifteen pieces. The logo credit goes to 3D, which is Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack. Hands got lent around.

Morcheeba, Who Can You Trust? (Indochina, ZEN009CD, 1 April 1996). Twelve pieces, and a catalogue number that has caused confusion ever since, because the ZEN in it belongs to Indochina and has nothing whatsoever to do with Ninja Tune.

Sneaker Pimps, Becoming X (Clean Up, 1996). Eleven pieces. Chris Corner and Liam Howe put it together in Hartlepool, up on the north east coast, about as far from Bristol as the island allows.

Alpha, Come from Heaven (Melankolic, DGSAD 2, 1997). Thirteen pieces, and these two genuinely are from Bristol. Melankolic belonged to Massive Attack, opened in September 1996, run by their manager Marc Picken.

Massive Attack, Mezzanine (Circa, WBRLP4, 20 April 1998). Eleven pieces.

What the catalogue numbers say

Seven years between Blue Lines and Mezzanine. Three catalogue numbers: WBRLP 1 to WBRLP4.

Massive Attack had dropped Wild Bunch as a label by the middle of the decade, and carried on numbering their records as though the old firm were still trading, on a label that was actually called Circa.

Which is the precise opposite of what the word trip hop did to them. One tag kept by choice. One tag handed over from outside, and never wanted.

The ones who weren’t from Bristol

The band pages say Bristol for Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky and Alpha. Count both Massive Attack entries and that’s five records out of the ten.

The other five came from somewhere else. Ninja Tune was London. Warp was Sheffield. Sneaker Pimps formed in Hartlepool.

The sound had one address and the word had another, and by the time anyone settled on what to call it the records were already scattered the length of the country.