Trip Hop

Trip hop is a style of Downtempo that emerged from the Bristol Sound scene in the early 1990s. Although it shares the constant, repetitive beats of downtempo, trip hop is texturally a little busier, featuring Hip Hop-influenced beats that evoke a surreal, trippy, dreamy, and sometimes dark atmosphere, as well as both live and electronic instrumentation. Other common features include offbeat turntable scratches, vocal melodies, and usually a mellow tempo in 4/4. Although some (particularly earlier) trip hop is instrumental or features rapped vocals, the genre often employs light, sometimes ethereal female vocals influenced by Contemporary R&B and Soul, with lyrical themes being abstract and metaphorical. The term "trip hop" was originally coined by Mixmag in an article about American producer DJ Shadow, but it would eventually come to define the emerging Bristol scene of groups such as Massive Attack and Portishead, both of whom enjoyed great commercial success in the United Kingdom. Since then, the trip hop movement has had a considerably broad influence on the mainstream, and has become a popular style both in and outside the UK. No longer considered regionally-centric, the term has been used to describe a plethora of acts that have melded the sound with different genres and music scenes, but are all still derivative of the early Bristol sound.