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Genre: A 33⅓ Series #1
Trip-Hop
Trip-hop described some of the 1990s' best music, and it was one of the decade's most revealing bad ideas.
The music itself was an intoxication of beats, bass, and voice. It emerged amid the social tensions of the late 1980s, and as part of hip-hop's rise to global dominance. It carried the innovations of Jamaican soundsystem culture, the sweet refuge of Lovers Rock, the bliss of club jazz dancefloors and post-rave chill-out rooms. It went mainstream with Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, DJ Shadow, Kruder & Dorfmeister, and Björk; and with record labels like Ninja Tune and Mo' Wax. To the artists' despair, the music was tagged with a silly label and packaged as music for the boutique and the lounge; made respectable with awards and acclaim.
But the music at its best still sounds experimental and dramatic; and its influence lingers through artists like FKA twigs, Sevdaliza, James Blake, Billie Eilish, and Lana Del Rey. This short book is a guide to 'trip-hop' in its context of the weird 1990 nostalgia and consumerism; pre-millenium angst and lo-fi technology; casual exoticism amid accelerating globalization and gentrification. This book presents a survey of the music and its leading artists, packed with recommended listening, essential tracks, great remixes, and under-recognized albums.
The music itself was an intoxication of beats, bass, and voice. It emerged amid the social tensions of the late 1980s, and as part of hip-hop's rise to global dominance. It carried the innovations of Jamaican soundsystem culture, the sweet refuge of Lovers Rock, the bliss of club jazz dancefloors and post-rave chill-out rooms. It went mainstream with Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, DJ Shadow, Kruder & Dorfmeister, and Björk; and with record labels like Ninja Tune and Mo' Wax. To the artists' despair, the music was tagged with a silly label and packaged as music for the boutique and the lounge; made respectable with awards and acclaim.
But the music at its best still sounds experimental and dramatic; and its influence lingers through artists like FKA twigs, Sevdaliza, James Blake, Billie Eilish, and Lana Del Rey. This short book is a guide to 'trip-hop' in its context of the weird 1990 nostalgia and consumerism; pre-millenium angst and lo-fi technology; casual exoticism amid accelerating globalization and gentrification. This book presents a survey of the music and its leading artists, packed with recommended listening, essential tracks, great remixes, and under-recognized albums.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
176 pages, Paperback
First published November 17, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 26, 2025
I hope when I write about music, I don’t come off like I have my head up my ass the way most of this book does. Well researched but ultimately dry/boring and void of personality
December 9, 2024
Scoring R.J. Wheaton's Trip Hop as Music Book
The skinny: this one does everything right, has a great conceptual bent and argumentative voice, and is only too short.
- Scoping: A. :shrug:
- Self-insertion: B. In plain terms, the author is competent (researched, even-handed, and fluid) to the point where his relevance to the matter basically doesn't matter. If I have a problem, it's this interesting sense I got that he's mangling his own opinions here, in places, -- sometimes the treatment of a specific release, in the body of a chapter, is both glancing and negative, and yet it gets tacked on at the end of the chapter on a list as 'essential listening.' (Maybe that's a statement on listening and the distance between the meaning of his and mine. (Reflects worse on me.))
- Rigor, Sociology: B+. The only issue here, I'm serious, is length. I think the expressions of the attitudes and settings of British musicians are good, helpful even; I think if he had a longer leash in writing, there'd be more of a bent towards discussing the fundamental rhetorics both of the musicians' relationships to their work, and of the industry cogs that branded the work. I genuinely feel this is something the author wanted to do, and it ends up in the constellation structuring of the book (works refracted through their relatedness in consciously involved social and artistic themes), in which he only gets to allude to some work worthy of expounding on.
- Captured Character / Premodernism: Call it a C, but without any despair. Not so much of a premodern book, and never staying too horribly long in the headplaces of many musicians (Charlie Dark aka D'Afro of the group Attica Blues feels like a pretty clear 'interviewee who turned out to be exceptionally salient and helpful and so appears thrice as often as you'd expect'). I think he does a good job of rendering artists sufficiently glowing-eyed when discussing their own motivations. What am I doing expounding here, anyway, this topic (at its loci from Tricky to DJ Shadow to DJ Spooky) is, really,( really,) more postmodern than premodern, it doesn't really demand saying...
or does it? If there's a singular statement made through the book (not throughout, but through, in the manner of the skewer that holds the chicken), it's that genre is a consumption concept that should be accepted as a face put on force, little more. (It's cogent: "This book has been an effort to foreground the artifice of categorization as a technology." These words are measured, powerful, good.) In the case of trip hop this went beyond the basal form of epistemic damage implicit to categorization as a means of capitalizing on music despite the fact of musical ultra-non-scarcity; the categorization was, here, the re-imposing of racialized stratifications upon/over work from artists who were in many cases happily pointing to their hip-hop roots, often their hopeful hip-hop belongings.
That's what we have here that's worthy of rescue, and of not letting plummet in the wake.
"The slight nudges which initiate multiplying advantages of our chaotic winner-take-all dynamics are considerably more opaque than whether a radio DJ plays your song. It’s easy to see how, still today, a spontaneously crafted category – the name of a playlist, say – might obscure some artists to the advantage of others. And systems that put mere micropayments into the hands of artists aren’t likely to upend the inequity in music’s commercial structure. In other words, in the age of superabundance we’re no less subject to ignorance of music that requires active effort on our parts as listeners – now users – to address. So perhaps the responsibilities for all this have shifted – from critic, or label marketing copywriter, to listener: to us. It’s on us to discern the narratives of music we like and seek."
The premodernity in hand: the continual success of the production apparatus which normalizes music into muzak and novel form into style; of the judiciary apparatus which echoes force in humanist language (fuck the Turtles, while we're here); and of the critical apparatus which bends and folds the continual successes of music as both information and as the amelioration of space and experience into something scarce, novel, and mystical, what we might miss if we aren't cool enough; sorry if it's gross to read in the language of the French 1960s (sampled and chopped by Brian Massumi)...
The florid lesson: don't let it be simple, when people point at roots or stars they make them. These things are enacted by act, enforced by force, the conscious cats know.
The skinny: this one does everything right, has a great conceptual bent and argumentative voice, and is only too short.
- Scoping: A. :shrug:
- Self-insertion: B. In plain terms, the author is competent (researched, even-handed, and fluid) to the point where his relevance to the matter basically doesn't matter. If I have a problem, it's this interesting sense I got that he's mangling his own opinions here, in places, -- sometimes the treatment of a specific release, in the body of a chapter, is both glancing and negative, and yet it gets tacked on at the end of the chapter on a list as 'essential listening.' (Maybe that's a statement on listening and the distance between the meaning of his and mine. (Reflects worse on me.))
- Rigor, Sociology: B+. The only issue here, I'm serious, is length. I think the expressions of the attitudes and settings of British musicians are good, helpful even; I think if he had a longer leash in writing, there'd be more of a bent towards discussing the fundamental rhetorics both of the musicians' relationships to their work, and of the industry cogs that branded the work. I genuinely feel this is something the author wanted to do, and it ends up in the constellation structuring of the book (works refracted through their relatedness in consciously involved social and artistic themes), in which he only gets to allude to some work worthy of expounding on.
- Captured Character / Premodernism: Call it a C, but without any despair. Not so much of a premodern book, and never staying too horribly long in the headplaces of many musicians (Charlie Dark aka D'Afro of the group Attica Blues feels like a pretty clear 'interviewee who turned out to be exceptionally salient and helpful and so appears thrice as often as you'd expect'). I think he does a good job of rendering artists sufficiently glowing-eyed when discussing their own motivations. What am I doing expounding here, anyway, this topic (at its loci from Tricky to DJ Shadow to DJ Spooky) is, really,( really,) more postmodern than premodern, it doesn't really demand saying...
or does it? If there's a singular statement made through the book (not throughout, but through, in the manner of the skewer that holds the chicken), it's that genre is a consumption concept that should be accepted as a face put on force, little more. (It's cogent: "This book has been an effort to foreground the artifice of categorization as a technology." These words are measured, powerful, good.) In the case of trip hop this went beyond the basal form of epistemic damage implicit to categorization as a means of capitalizing on music despite the fact of musical ultra-non-scarcity; the categorization was, here, the re-imposing of racialized stratifications upon/over work from artists who were in many cases happily pointing to their hip-hop roots, often their hopeful hip-hop belongings.
That's what we have here that's worthy of rescue, and of not letting plummet in the wake.
"The slight nudges which initiate multiplying advantages of our chaotic winner-take-all dynamics are considerably more opaque than whether a radio DJ plays your song. It’s easy to see how, still today, a spontaneously crafted category – the name of a playlist, say – might obscure some artists to the advantage of others. And systems that put mere micropayments into the hands of artists aren’t likely to upend the inequity in music’s commercial structure. In other words, in the age of superabundance we’re no less subject to ignorance of music that requires active effort on our parts as listeners – now users – to address. So perhaps the responsibilities for all this have shifted – from critic, or label marketing copywriter, to listener: to us. It’s on us to discern the narratives of music we like and seek."
The premodernity in hand: the continual success of the production apparatus which normalizes music into muzak and novel form into style; of the judiciary apparatus which echoes force in humanist language (fuck the Turtles, while we're here); and of the critical apparatus which bends and folds the continual successes of music as both information and as the amelioration of space and experience into something scarce, novel, and mystical, what we might miss if we aren't cool enough; sorry if it's gross to read in the language of the French 1960s (sampled and chopped by Brian Massumi)...
The florid lesson: don't let it be simple, when people point at roots or stars they make them. These things are enacted by act, enforced by force, the conscious cats know.
November 15, 2025
I enjoy reading writers who bring serious criticism to popular art forms. I even like it when writers reach a little and make fanciful claims (see Greil Marcus). But I find Wheaton overreaching at times in this book.
His knowledge is encyclopedic, and he culls from an array of sources to contextualize the phenomenon of trip-hop. His sharp critical eye comes to bear on all aspects of the music associated with the genre, to great effect. We learn a good deal about diverse musical styles and movements from the past, technology, social networks, the recording process, etc. Much of the time his relation of the music to broad political, legal technological, and socioeconomic phenomena works:
“If trip-hop’s rise and fall was a small eddy between two giant global cultural vortices–hip-hop and internet distribution–it can nonetheless tell us something about what happens when musics are uncoupled from place, when ‘new genres’ are brought into being more by arbiters than by musicians and audiences; when listeners have uneven access to the music of the past; how music evolves when its constraints shift from being about physical distribution to intellectual property. All these questions, obviously, are Internet questions–and no less present now than they were then” (7).
Other times, it works less. His extension of analysis of trip-hop to a range of societal ills is not always convincing. For being a fan, the author sure seems tortured. A sense of guilt looms over the text.
It is an odd emotion for musical criticism. Nonetheless, this book is deeply researched and deeply enjoyable.
His knowledge is encyclopedic, and he culls from an array of sources to contextualize the phenomenon of trip-hop. His sharp critical eye comes to bear on all aspects of the music associated with the genre, to great effect. We learn a good deal about diverse musical styles and movements from the past, technology, social networks, the recording process, etc. Much of the time his relation of the music to broad political, legal technological, and socioeconomic phenomena works:
“If trip-hop’s rise and fall was a small eddy between two giant global cultural vortices–hip-hop and internet distribution–it can nonetheless tell us something about what happens when musics are uncoupled from place, when ‘new genres’ are brought into being more by arbiters than by musicians and audiences; when listeners have uneven access to the music of the past; how music evolves when its constraints shift from being about physical distribution to intellectual property. All these questions, obviously, are Internet questions–and no less present now than they were then” (7).
Other times, it works less. His extension of analysis of trip-hop to a range of societal ills is not always convincing. For being a fan, the author sure seems tortured. A sense of guilt looms over the text.
It is an odd emotion for musical criticism. Nonetheless, this book is deeply researched and deeply enjoyable.
November 7, 2024
Was really odd reading this book about chill-out music and all its influences heading into the most stressful election cycle in modern history. While I appreciated the music itself, hearing all the names and all the references was a bit much to handle... but how do you sum up a genre of music that just makes you feel, well, calm? Or that you can love in the background of your day because it just makes you feel better... that even though you may not have really listened closely you still *heard* it. Listening to it was more fun than reading about it for me... but this book does have plenty of great suggestions for things to listen to, so that's a bonus.
November 19, 2022
A very thorough dive into the trip hop genre; well-researched and thought-out.
I was particularly intrigued/impressed by Wheaton’s explorations into the forced commercialization of the genre, disdain for categorization and credit-where-it’s-due to hip hop.
The book openly admires the vast styles of music often lumped together by the “trip hop” misnomer while addressing the gentrification of the music and the outright theft of the original creators.
Few authors could have handled the racial and cultural implications of what “trip hop” became with the integrity, thoughtfulness and empathy of Wheaton while still driving the narrative forward and with optimism.
While well-researched, the book isn’t academic or forceful. Instead, the narrative propels its reader forward with factual anecdotes, genuine admiration and honest criticism.
Bonus points for compiling dope playlists at the end of each chapter.
While not for the initiated, I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who has dived into the outer edges of hip hop and wants to add more context.
I was particularly intrigued/impressed by Wheaton’s explorations into the forced commercialization of the genre, disdain for categorization and credit-where-it’s-due to hip hop.
The book openly admires the vast styles of music often lumped together by the “trip hop” misnomer while addressing the gentrification of the music and the outright theft of the original creators.
Few authors could have handled the racial and cultural implications of what “trip hop” became with the integrity, thoughtfulness and empathy of Wheaton while still driving the narrative forward and with optimism.
While well-researched, the book isn’t academic or forceful. Instead, the narrative propels its reader forward with factual anecdotes, genuine admiration and honest criticism.
Bonus points for compiling dope playlists at the end of each chapter.
While not for the initiated, I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who has dived into the outer edges of hip hop and wants to add more context.
December 20, 2022
I listened to a lot of Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky. Thought I knew a lot about this genre as I consider it one of my favorite.
i was wrong and learned a lot reading this book. More groups, songs and records.
Informative, well researeched, and well written.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine
i was wrong and learned a lot reading this book. More groups, songs and records.
Informative, well researeched, and well written.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine
December 13, 2022
Trip-Hop by RJ Wheaton is part of a 33 1/3 series that looks at musical genres, written primarily as an intro for those either unfamiliar or just becoming familiar with them. This volume does an excellent job of presenting trip-hop so people can understand the cultural environment when the term was coined as well as how well the term does or does not fit the music.
Like many people who were at least in their mid-teens, and I was well past that age, during the 90s, this music will either bring back fond memories of great songs or the shudder that comes from remembering an unappealing label given to often only loosely connected artists and styles. While this wasn't necessarily my go-to genre at the time, I listened to a lot of this and enjoyed it enough to buy quite a few of the albums (yes, I'm old enough to call anything that isn't a single an album). So that is some idea where I came to this book from.
Because I tend to listen to lots of different types of music, I often don't pay attention to labels that start making subtle differentiations. It isn't that I don't think many of them work and are valid, just that I don't care when it comes to me deciding what to listen to or buy. To go back to my youth for an example, the lines were very blurred between folk rock, singer-songwriter, country rock, easy rock. The first few Eagles albums, JD Souther, James Taylor, etc could be classified as at least two of them at any time. So they meant nothing to me as a listener.
Having said all that, I absolutely love learning about why and how these genres (sub-genres?) came to be, what their characteristics are, and, I think quite importantly, who created the name (artists, fans, marketing people, record execs?). This volume goes a long way toward answering these questions, showing what these artists and their music had in common as well as how the term wasn't entirely embraced or even completely accurate.
While I definitely enjoyed learning about the stories behind the name and the music, I also have to admit to just having a great time revisiting these songs. This was as much a trip down memory lane for me as it was a learning experience.
Highly recommended for those interested in learning more about how we classify music, rightly or wrongly, as well as those simply curious about what falls into this strange sounding (the name, not the music) genre. And, of course, anyone who remembers this music fondly will enjoy the nostalgic aspect.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
Like many people who were at least in their mid-teens, and I was well past that age, during the 90s, this music will either bring back fond memories of great songs or the shudder that comes from remembering an unappealing label given to often only loosely connected artists and styles. While this wasn't necessarily my go-to genre at the time, I listened to a lot of this and enjoyed it enough to buy quite a few of the albums (yes, I'm old enough to call anything that isn't a single an album). So that is some idea where I came to this book from.
Because I tend to listen to lots of different types of music, I often don't pay attention to labels that start making subtle differentiations. It isn't that I don't think many of them work and are valid, just that I don't care when it comes to me deciding what to listen to or buy. To go back to my youth for an example, the lines were very blurred between folk rock, singer-songwriter, country rock, easy rock. The first few Eagles albums, JD Souther, James Taylor, etc could be classified as at least two of them at any time. So they meant nothing to me as a listener.
Having said all that, I absolutely love learning about why and how these genres (sub-genres?) came to be, what their characteristics are, and, I think quite importantly, who created the name (artists, fans, marketing people, record execs?). This volume goes a long way toward answering these questions, showing what these artists and their music had in common as well as how the term wasn't entirely embraced or even completely accurate.
While I definitely enjoyed learning about the stories behind the name and the music, I also have to admit to just having a great time revisiting these songs. This was as much a trip down memory lane for me as it was a learning experience.
Highly recommended for those interested in learning more about how we classify music, rightly or wrongly, as well as those simply curious about what falls into this strange sounding (the name, not the music) genre. And, of course, anyone who remembers this music fondly will enjoy the nostalgic aspect.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
January 23, 2023
Finding trip-hop an awkward genre, indeed finding genre itself an awkward idea, this book might surprise in sort of taking a run-up at the subject multiple times in the light of several things trip-hop is adjacent to – "lovers' hip-hop", "abstract hip-hop", "illbient". Surprisingly, perhaps, the many over-lapping chronologies, like the act of climbing a mountain with three steps forward and one back, does eventually get us through the journey. It's not a brilliant journey – like any academic you can throw a strange fruit at these days it seems much more happy talking about race than anything else – but it is a useful summary of the days when a certain construct of dance music, defined by sampled-yet-organic-sounding drums, hip-hop-influenced samples and moods and feels, and probably a female songstress put on top, turned from edgy to omnipresent, only to pretty much never be thought about since.
The thing is I've only seen this series very recently, and so my exposure to it with only the "Death Metal" title and now this doesn't really indicate what has gone before – I saw a short list of forthcoming titles but not ones already out there. Death metal, I had it, was something you really should only be interested in for about three years, but here I don't know. It certainly was part of my record-buying history, even in small amounts, but this seems a greater affair, even if it did quickly go from organ donors to selling any and every track off "Play" to as many TV shows and car adverts as possible. So this book has an ill-defined niche sector of dance that burnt brightly for quite some time, and I dare say it, exists in more CD collections (ask your father) than does death metal. It's music that, even if it got watered down in a universal downtempo mish-mash, certainly seems to deserve a book discussing it. And though the bibliography suggests there are more than I would have imagined already, this little piece served me fine as the only one I'd need.
The thing is I've only seen this series very recently, and so my exposure to it with only the "Death Metal" title and now this doesn't really indicate what has gone before – I saw a short list of forthcoming titles but not ones already out there. Death metal, I had it, was something you really should only be interested in for about three years, but here I don't know. It certainly was part of my record-buying history, even in small amounts, but this seems a greater affair, even if it did quickly go from organ donors to selling any and every track off "Play" to as many TV shows and car adverts as possible. So this book has an ill-defined niche sector of dance that burnt brightly for quite some time, and I dare say it, exists in more CD collections (ask your father) than does death metal. It's music that, even if it got watered down in a universal downtempo mish-mash, certainly seems to deserve a book discussing it. And though the bibliography suggests there are more than I would have imagined already, this little piece served me fine as the only one I'd need.
November 17, 2022
Trip-Hop - RJ Wheaton
I was curious to read this. I used to be into music and culture journalism and writing, now I mainly read fiction.
The 90's trip-hop era coincided with when I was most into buying music and bought all the hit albums from all the '90's mainstream artists' listed in the blurb.
I was reading this to learn, to compare with my own understanding and knowledge of the genre and to learn about the lasting impact and current influences.
Was trip-hop a genre or was it the influence if the Bristol sound? Was it rooted in experimental hiphop or something much broader?
This book is great for cataloging the artists, the sub-genres and the tracks, fantastic nowadays with YouTube, streaming, etc, and all the tracks just a click away.
I was less impressed by the journalism, the author's viewpoint felt excited but without much personal reflection. I've read lots of the artist quotes previously. I would have liked more about the cultural buzz.
I don't usually read academic music books but it was worth a read and well put together, I could see this book being useful for anyone wanting to get a better understanding of the expansive variety of the genre.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic.
I was curious to read this. I used to be into music and culture journalism and writing, now I mainly read fiction.
The 90's trip-hop era coincided with when I was most into buying music and bought all the hit albums from all the '90's mainstream artists' listed in the blurb.
I was reading this to learn, to compare with my own understanding and knowledge of the genre and to learn about the lasting impact and current influences.
Was trip-hop a genre or was it the influence if the Bristol sound? Was it rooted in experimental hiphop or something much broader?
This book is great for cataloging the artists, the sub-genres and the tracks, fantastic nowadays with YouTube, streaming, etc, and all the tracks just a click away.
I was less impressed by the journalism, the author's viewpoint felt excited but without much personal reflection. I've read lots of the artist quotes previously. I would have liked more about the cultural buzz.
I don't usually read academic music books but it was worth a read and well put together, I could see this book being useful for anyone wanting to get a better understanding of the expansive variety of the genre.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic.
November 23, 2022
In Trip-hop, RJ Wheaton presents a concise, detailed, playlist filled history of the genre.
Wheaton begins by discussing the genres development, international places of importance before presenting the major works or groups in a (roughly) chronological order. Like all of the book in the Genre series, there are copious recommendations of artists and songs divided out between the highly recommended to the more completist style lists.
As is not surprising with labels, but what trip-hop means has been highly debated with those assigned the name preferring others. Wheaton also takes time to explore the cultural dimensions and how the sound eventually reached a nadir as what had been exciting was commercialized.
These are perfect works for our digital age, allowing one to learn the full history of a style music, being able to access much of the featured content much easier then those who were creating it.
I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
Wheaton begins by discussing the genres development, international places of importance before presenting the major works or groups in a (roughly) chronological order. Like all of the book in the Genre series, there are copious recommendations of artists and songs divided out between the highly recommended to the more completist style lists.
As is not surprising with labels, but what trip-hop means has been highly debated with those assigned the name preferring others. Wheaton also takes time to explore the cultural dimensions and how the sound eventually reached a nadir as what had been exciting was commercialized.
These are perfect works for our digital age, allowing one to learn the full history of a style music, being able to access much of the featured content much easier then those who were creating it.
I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
September 24, 2025
Para alguien que tiene un punto medio de conocimiento sobre la música trip-hop, es una lectura más que útil y eficiente para conocer sus orígenes y ampliar en esos géneros que dieron forma y los subyacentes del mismo. A pesar de lo inconexo que se pudiera sentir al hablar de formas musicales que sugieren ser totalmente distintas, tienen sentido en la inspiración que marco para el género en sus distintas épocas.
December 10, 2023
From Beats to The Beats, this nifty, comprehensive volume is a must read for trip hop fans - and no - it does not only focus on the Bristol sound. As I learnt trip hop's tentacles go as far as Japan.
December 11, 2023
RJ Wheaton does an incredible job critiquing trip-hop while still appreciating the genre and its many charms.
Reviewed at Spectrum Culture:
https://spectrumculture.com/2022/12/1...
Reviewed at Spectrum Culture:
https://spectrumculture.com/2022/12/1...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews