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| | For subscribers | June 17, 2025 | | 
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A trip through trip-hop's past and future
10 songs, 50 min 30 sec
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| Beth Gibbons of Portishead onstage in 2008. Oliver Hartung for The New York Times |
Dear listeners,
Over the past couple of years, it's started to feel like every out-of-favor electronic music style from the 1990s is returning at once. PinkPantheress is singing pop songs over drum-and-bass beats. Oklou uses trance synths. Hyperpop has made "uncool" taste a creative virtue. (On the less-out-of-favor, more-commercially-successful end of things, there's Beyoncé and Charli XCX's love for "Show Me Love.")
Signs have been building that trip-hop, a genre that reached popularity in the mid-90s by mixing atmospheric hip-hop beats with moody pop vocals, was next up for a resurgence. In one sense, it's a sound that never fully went away — step into any swanky hotel bar over the past few decades — but it was seen as a creative dead end. "Today, trip-hop is the most toothless of beats-based styles," the critic Jody Rosen wrote in a 2003 article in The New York Times about Massive Attack, one of the genre's standard-bearers. "It's easy listening for hipsters in space-age sneakers."
Well, lace up my space-age sneakers, because this music is sounding good again. Confirmation that I wasn't imagining things hit my inbox via a recent edition of the always perceptive Herb Sundays music newsletter, which found ample evidence that trip-hop is in the zeitgeist, like Logic1000's new, low-B.P.M. mix for the long-running DJ-Kicks series. (They referred to the sound as "downtempo," one of a few related labels, but let's not get lost in the subgenre soup and just vibe, OK?)
Here are six classics from trip-hop's initial wave and four tracks from current artists who are picking up the torch.
A woman in the moon is singing to the earth,
Dave
1. Portishead: "Sour Times"
Portishead ultimately stretched past trip-hop, but this track from its 1994 debut album, "Dummy" — the group's only song to chart in the United States — is one of the best-known in the genre. It sets a sampled Lalo Schifrin spy theme against a shuffling breakbeat to create the perfect backdrop for the singer Beth Gibbons's conflicted croon: "Nobody loves me, it's true / Not like you do."
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Sneaker Pimps: "6 Underground"
A poppier successor to "Sour Times," "6 Underground" sampled yet another spy theme (by the Bond composer John Barry) and became ubiquitous on alt-rock radio and "120 Minutes," MTV's late-night showcase for left-field music. Shouts to Matt Pinfield.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. The Herbaliser: "Another Mother"
It's going to be hard to keep from writing "this one has a sick bass line" throughout the playlist — but hey, if it fits. The London duo of Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba jumped around stylistically on their second album as the Herbaliser, "Blow Your Headphones," with some faster tempos and collaborations with M.C.s that play more like regular rap music. But this cut and its cousin, "A Mother (for Your Mind)," are trip-hop to a T.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Cibo Matto: "Sugar Water"
The Cibo Matto members Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda, both Japanese expats living in New York City, were at the nexus of all kinds of musical scenes and have collaborated with Gorillaz, the Beastie Boys and Sean Ono Lennon, among many others. The booming drums and ghostly vocals of "Sugar Water" combine into an undeniable groove, and the track's backward-and-forward music video, directed by Michel Gondry, is a clever delight.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Thievery Corporation: "Shaolin Satellite"
"Get down everybody!" This 1997 highlight from "Sounds From the Thievery Hi-Fi" plays like deconstructed hip-hop, with vocal samples weaving in and out of shifting drum breaks, wah-wah guitar, spacey sitar and ethereal tones. It bangs.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Massive Attack featuring Elizabeth Fraser: "Teardrop"
So much drama on such a sparse canvas. This track from "Mezzanine" (1998) juxtaposes hard-knocking snares and background static with vocals from the Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser. In contrast with her own band's often inscrutable lyrics, Fraser's enunciation here startles with its clarity ("Teardrop on the fire of a confession / Fearless on my breath").
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Hoodie x James K: "Scorpio"
Now fast-forward to 2023, and … this one has a sick bass line. It also includes elements of semi-adjacent '90s genres like shoegaze and dream-pop, which have seen an uptick of attention among younger listeners in recent years. (It's a real thing — this past Friday I heard one of my daughter's high school friends playing a Cocteau Twins song on her phone. Respect.) James K is an N.Y.C.-based musician and NTS Radio D.J. whose debut full-length, "Friend," is due this fall; highly anticipated, at least by me.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Fcukers: "I Don't Wanna"
For their buzzy EP release show last September, this New York group revived the defunct Chinatown party spot 88 Palace, a nightclub that pops up in a dim sum restaurant in a mini-mall, if that gives you an idea of the no-frills hedonistic vibe. (The place was packed.) Most of their music is in a more bumpin' '90s pop-house style — think Basement Jaxx covering Beck — but "I Don't Wanna" takes the "Dummy" formula downtown (and it works).
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. a.s.o.: "My Baby's Got It Out for Me"
When I heard a.s.o.'s self-titled album in 2023, it cemented for me that trip-hop could actually be pushed forward creatively. The singer-songwriter Alia Seror O'Neill (a.k.a. Alias Error) and the producer Lewie Day (a.k.a. Tornado Wallace) cite Julee Cruise, Cocteau Twins and (of course) Portishead as inspirations, but a.s.o.'s music is a statement all its own. Every element of this song feels woozy; listen and swoon.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. DJ Python featuring Isabella Lovestory: "Besos Robados"
Is it trip-hop or maybe trip-reggaeton? DJ Python's "Dulce Compañia" LP wowed me with a minimalist electronic take on the dembow rhythm in 2017. He's done plenty since, but this standout from a new EP on XL Recordings is in a similar zone, enhanced by Spanish vocals from the Honduran singer Isabella Lovestory.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
"Trip-Hop's Past and Future" track list
Track 1: Portishead, "Sour Times"
Track 2: Sneaker Pimps, "6 Underground"
Track 3: The Herbaliser, "Another Mother"
Track 4: Cibo Matto, "Sugar Water"
Track 5: Thievery Corporation, "Shaolin Satellite"
Track 6: Massive Attack featuring Elizabeth Fraser, "Teardrop"
Track 7: Hoodie x James K, "Scorpio"
Track 8: Fcukers, "I Don't Wanna"
Track 9: a.s.o., "My Baby's Got It Out for Me"
Track 10: DJ Python featuring Isabella Lovestory, "Besos Robados"
Bonus Tracks
One of the heaviest downtempo documents, Kruder & Dorfmeister's 1998 compilation "The K&D Sessions," is largely absent from Spotify. Track down their dub mix of the Aphrodelics' "Rollin' on Chrome" or the William S. Burroughs-inspired "Bug Powder Dust" by Bomb the Bass.
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Have feedback? Ideas for a playlist? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at theamplifier@nytimes.com.
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