While it’s never been one of the most chart-topping genres inmusic, there’s something about the sound oftrip-hopthat’s always drawn me in. It’s a sleek, slick, and seductive kind of music, and one that’s been woefully underrepresented inpop music in recent decades. The increasing popularity of simple but effective digital recording tools and distribution systems has seen a shift in music tastes over the years, as well as a rise inself-produced artists. As a result,classic analog genreshave faded from the public eye.
Yet back in the ’90s, it was all over the charts, particularly in the United Kingdom, which many of the sound’s most well-known artists call home. In fact, while an American producer was partially responsible for the track that led to the coining of trip-hop’s name, the DNA of the genre is as fundamentally English as two of the genre’s most foundational bands, Massive Attack and Portishead, who both released incredibly important albums in 1994.
1994 Saw The Release Of Albums From Both Massive Attack And Portishead
Electronic Music Would Never Be The Same
Trip-hop - or as it was sometimes known before 1994, the “Bristol sound” - emerged for the most part from the UK’s underground hip-hop scene, which had become heavily influenced by England’s many immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean nations that came over in the ’70s and ’80s. Much like how those immigrants' musical traditions combined with the nascent UK punk scene to give birth to the second wave of ska,they also influenced the development of hip-hop, leading to the birth of soundsystems- informal groups of DJs, producers, and MCs working together.
The Wild Bunch were a soundsystem from Bristol that was a foundational part of that scene’s development through the end of the ’80s. The departure of the Wild Bunch’s founding member, DJ Nature, saw the collective reorganize under the name Massive Attack and sign their first record contract, which led to the release of their first album, 1991’sBlue Lines, which was a smash success, even managing to reach a mainstream audience.
[Blue Lines] combined traditional hip-hop production methods, the dub-derived psychedelic textures of Jamaican DJs, and a wide variety of instrumentation into something new.
Blue Lineswas an inflection point in the development of the Bristol sound, and was seen both as the beginning of a new, uniquely British, hip-hop scene, and as a complete departure from hip-hop, asit combined traditional hip-hop production methods, the dub-derived psychedelic textures of Jamaican DJs, and a wide variety of instrumentationinto something new. At the same time, another group of musicians in Bristol who called themselves Portishead - one of whom, Geoff Barrow, had worked in the studio whereBlue Lineswas recorded - were taking their own stab at a similar kind of spaced-out, sample-heavy sound.
The term “trip hop” was first used in the June 1994 issue ofMixmag, where music journalist Andy Pemberton used it to describe “In/Flux,” a 1993 single from DJ Shadow and UK electronic group RPM.
The result was that the fall of 1994 saw the newly-christened genre of trip-hop celebrate two fantastic album releases within weeks of each other. Portishead’s debutDummydropped at the end of August, and Massive Attack’sProtectionfollowed just a month later, andwith those back-to-back albums, the Bristol sound was officially reborn as trip-hop, and the world of electronic music would never be the same.
Massive Attack’s Protection Is A Beautiful Release From Trip-Hop’s Foundational Soundsystem
Building Off Their Debut Album, Massive Attack Continued To Show That The UK’s Hip-Hop Was Just As Innovative As The USA’s
After the genre-defining release ofBlue Linein 1991, Massive Attack had high expectations for their next album, and they pulled out all the stops to produce another phenomenal release.Protection, which leads off with a hypnotic, alluring title track that prominently features guest vocals from the legendary Tracey Thorn, wasinitially criticized for lacking the same focus asBlue Lines, yet the album has endured over the yearsthanks to its impeccable production quality.
Protectionnot only builds off ofBlue Linesstylistically, but also aesthetically.Blue Lines' cover featured a simple “flammable gas” hazard sign, with the band’s name superimposed over it.Protection’s cover was the same logo, but burned away to reveal an impenetrable metal wall, as if the gas had ignited. Both covers also used the same font in order to maintain a sense of visual continuity.
Protectionalso helped Massive Attack further refine their sound. What critics likeRolling Stone’s Paul Evans derided as a lack of focus could also be seen as experimentation and metamorphosis, further incorporating the soundsystem’s older dub influences on tracks like “Karmacoma” while also exploring more atmospheric instrumental vibes, such as on the album’s closer, “Heat Miser.”
WithProtection, Massive Attack found themselves at the center of the trip-hop boom…
That sense of atmospherics and sonic landscapes likely contributed to why Nellee Hooper, former member of the Wild Bunch andProtection’s producer, was tapped just a few years later to produce and help compose the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann’s seminalRomeo + Juliet. It also provided fertile ground for Mad Professor, a British dub DJ, to remix into 1995’sNo Protection. Either way, withProtection,Massive Attack found themselves at the center of the trip-hop boom, and would remain there through the rest of the ’90s.
While Massive Attack, thanks to their origins as a soundsystem, were a large group -Protectionfeatured not only the band’s four core members at the time, but also nearly a dozen guest performers - Portishead took a very different tack with their instrumentation and sound. The Bristol trio, named for the small coastal town where drummer and producer Geoff Barrow grew up, not only leaned heavily on traditional hip-hop sampling techniques forDummy, but also turned the very idea up to 11.
Many of those vinyl records were damaged or distressed - often by Barrow and the other bandmembers walking on them repeatedly, or even using them as skateboards…
None ofDummywas recorded digitally. Instead,the entire album was initially recorded piecemeal, and individual tracks were then laid down on vinyl so that the final mix was completely created through Barrow’s turntables and a set of broken amplifiers. In order to create the anachronistic techno-vintage sound the band was after, many of those vinyl records were damaged or distressed - often by Barrow and the other bandmembers walking on them repeatedly, or even using them as skateboards. Broken amplifiers were also used for the recording process in order to further distress the sound.
The result was an album as unique as anything that had ever come out of Bristol. Critics not just in the UK, but also worldwide, were overflowing with praise forDummy, from the haunting acid jazz crooning of vocalist Beth Gibbons to the experimental breakbeats and sampling. Sharon O’Connell of British music weeklyMelody Makerperhaps summed it up the most eloquently:
[Portishead] are undeniably the classiest, coolest thing to have appeared in this country for years …Dummy, their debut, takes perfectly understated blues, funk and rap/hip hop, brackets all this in urban angst and then chills it to the bone. … Dummy is …musique noirefor a movie not yet made, a perfect, creamy mix of ice-cool and infra-heat that is desolate, desperate and driven by a huge emotional hunger, but also warmly confiding … Most of us waver hopelessly between emotional timidity and temerity the whole of our lives andDummymarks out that territory perfectly. (Melody Maker, June 16, 2025)
1994’s Flashpoint Of Trip-Hop Brilliance Couldn’t Happen Again Today, But The Influences Still Remain
From DJ Shadow To Sneaker Pimps, The Genre’s Old Guard Continue To Remain Relevant Today
While much of trip-hophas faded into musical history as public tastes have changed over the past few decades, both Portishead and Massive Attack - as well as other seminal trip-hop artists, such as the aforementioned DJ Shadow - continued on with brilliant releases well past the turn of the millennium. Yetmuch of the novelty of the sound relied heavily on classic analog production techniques, many of which have fallen by the waysideas digital technologies have made them into anachronisms at best.
Massive Attack’s last release was 2020’s EPEutopia; Portishead haven’t released an album since 2008’sThird, although 2024 saw a remaster of their seminal 1998 live album,Roseland NYC Live, as well as the first solo release for vocalist Beth Gibbons, the phenomenally personal chamber-popLives Outgrown.
Trip-hoplikely couldn’t have evolved out ofthe modern hip-hop scene; it was very much a product of the place and time in which it evolved, as reliant on ’80s hip-hop DJs with crates of records and a DIY ethos as it was on the systemic ennui of Generation X. Yet Portishead, Massive Attack, DJ Shadow, and the rest remain active, proving that the genre remains relevant - and hopefully the next generation of brilliant producers is waiting in the wings to revitalize the beautifully atemporal sound for a new audience.
