Massive Attack - Collected

I need to feel good again. Obviously real life isn't going to make that happen, so we'll have to turn to the glorious world of headphones to soothe the savage beast. Now, your old friend Bottle doesn't really go for the sunshiny beach volleyball type of feel good, he likes to dive head first down a dark alley and say "oy! Mate. Show me something worth my time."

Trip hop isn't really a genre. It's the name everyone gave the downtempo dj scene in Bristol in the early 90s. Believe it or not it's an evolution of House more than anything. Trip hop is really just 3 groups: Massive Attack with or without Tricky, Tricky on his own, and Portishead. Sure, lots of other groups make Trip Hop, like Groove Armada and Sneaker Pimps, even Bjork and Poe dabbled in it. Homogenic is widely considered a sort of Trip Hop masterpiece. Bottle says yes and no on that one. Trip Hop is just slow breakbeats, jazz or soul sampling, and atmospheric electronics. You can fit Bjork inside that description if you're desperate, but like i said at the start, it really isn't a genre, it's a scene.

You know Massive Attack because the TV show House used Angel as it's theme song. If you had to boil it down to one word, that word is probably "haunting." It's not daytime music, it's probably raining, there are occasional ghost sightings, dark smoky club in a cobblestone alley. Massive Attack is much more overtly Hip Hop than Portishead, and also much more stylistically diverse.

Interesting fact, Robert "3D" Del Naja is a major contender for secretly being Banksy. Tonight we're listening to their 2006 best of album Collected. It's fantastic. Tons of people all over it, even a Sinead O'Connor appearance hiding in there. You can definitely hear what Bjork was influenced by in their later work (especially strings over beats). 

Critics like to point to Tricky in particular for "transcending the gangsta rap ethos." That's grade a BS, but Tricky and 3D both manage to be neither confrontational nor corny so i can see what they're trying to say, sort of, if i squint just right. There's thousands of rappers like that, but they don't have real money backing them up. Personally, i just love the aural aesthetic of lofi hip-hop and EDM. As two thirds of the thing that is Trip Hop, Massive Attack is glorious and Collected is pretty awesome if you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on reissues and imports.

Give them a try, i think they are truly  fantastic... Oh yeah, that hits the spot. Karmacoma here i come.