This weekend I was going to take some time and continue on with the Introductions Series, looking at alt-folk from Neutral Milk Hotel, through Beirut and Devotchka, back to A Hawk and a Hacksaw.

Instead, I seem to have been snowed under with other commitments in my life, like my course, finding an actual job, and generally enjoying what time I have left in this country. As much as I love this blog, and I love my music, something had to give - it couldn't be the course; it couldn't be my lifestyle; so, it was this blog.

As of now, The Retrospective Review is taking an indefinite hiatus. There will be no posts on this blog as of today, though I will be maintaining my personal blog.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll come back whenever I find the time to start this up properly.

When the world seemed like there was no hope for music left, along came Damon Albarn, fresh from Blur, and he took some cartoon men and made them sing. And what they did was take the base of trip-hop, and tear it up to make their own music. Their debut album wasn't exactly trip-hop, as hip-hop over dub; and their second album was more hip-pop, but, buried under it all, under the paint and the facades was the last of the trip-hop albums: Demon Days.

What Gorillaz managed to do with this album is create music for the masses. It was still lyrical; it was still poetic; it still had that dark vibe taken from the trip-hop of the nineties. And yet, it was different. It was a unique slice of the mind of Damon Albarn. It was something that the kids growing up had never heard before. Aside from Gorillaz, there wasn't a large mainstream group putting out this kind of music.

I find Demon Days interesting. It blended the sounds of Blur, and more than just Albarn's vocals, with the electronic world. O Green World took on a distinctly Blur-esque sound, but yet moulded it to fit in with the Gorillaz persona. They took on hip-hop; they took on any challenge that came before them. It was inspiring.

Admittedly, for me, as a person who struggles with traditional hip-hop, I find this album hard to listen to. Songs like El Manana just don't 'do' it for me. I don't know what it is, but, I still can see the value in the songs I don't like. I suppose, in a way, it's the same as asking a fan of hip-hop to listen to Burzum without any prior warning - you're not always guaranteed a good answer. Ironically, when MF Doom gets involved on November Has Come, a true hip-hop tune, I loved it.

So, what are you getting here? Like I've said. It's not pureblood trip-hop. This is the progression. This is hip-pop in a sense; it's got the background, but, it's floated into lands unknown. A warning to all fellow travellers. Here be dragons, and rappers.


Overall: 7/10 - Ironically, it's the fact that it's not trip-hop enough that makes this progression lose marks. Compared to the others, it's just an album; but, it's an evolution away from the years of Portishead, and Massive Attack.

Top Track: All Alone

Another day, another oldie. This time, I've crossed the English Channel and ventured to France for some of the finest trip-hop on the continental side of Portishead. I am, of course, talking about Télépopmusik, the French trio responsible for some of the dreamiest trip-hop of the last decade. While Sneaker Pimps were busy being wordy, Imogen Heap was busy being Zach Braff's favourite singer, and Portishead were swimming in a pool of Bauhaus, these guys were concentrating on the more ethereal, dream-pop side of their respective label. And five years ago, they put out their last album, Angel Milk.

A fifteen track romp through the realms of trip-hop seems a bit daunting at first. It's not exactly the easiest genre to get into, if you're not looking for background music, or you're not drunk, I find. So, when I decided I'd finally get around to listening to this beauty, I wasn't so much pleasantly surprised as lulled into a false sense of security.

It starts perfectly fine. In fact, I could have enjoyed a full album based around the songs it started with and finished with. They were trip-hop of the finest order; comparable with Portishead. They weren't lacking in anything, and they flowed so nicely. Then, jarringly came three songs in the middle, starting with Love's Almighty, which just trudged along slowly, lacklustre and depressing. It was like trip-hop on a massive K-hole.

Sure, the three songs I'm singling out are decent; but, in terms of this album they were a total wall of 'low'. It really did bring a bit of a downer of the whole experience. It went from being such a free flowing album - a river of music, if you will - to like wading through treacle. I think, particularly with Love's Almighty, when they come in and say "Okay, okay, start again" and it picks up the 'oomph!' that they potentially saved themselves from me wanting to turn off.

Still, 15 tracks later, I was still listening to it, and, when it ended on that lovely note, I went back and listened to it again. "I always feel better after I fly
I fly every morning for at least fifteen minutes or so" says the final song. I agree, at least if flying is anything remotely close to this album.


Overall: 8/10 - I think the closest I've got to enjoying foreign experimental stuff this much was Bjork, and even she was a tough cookie to crack. This one just melts in your mouth; saccharine sweet, with the occasional lemon bitterness.

Top Track: Stop Running Away

The new Millennium was about to arrive. The first waves of the Y2K hysteria were beginning to show, and it had been a year since Sneaker Pimps had asked singer Kelli Dayton to leave so they wouldn't fall foul of being compared to Portishead. Admittedly, it was a wise move, since Becoming X had sounded suspiciously close to the realms of Portishead. Still, as 1999 rolled onwards, they released a new album, fronted by Chris Corner, Splinter.

The difference between Portishead and Sneaker Pimps became really noticeable when Chris Corner took up vocals. The songs sounded so different with a male vocalist, but, still, in the background the trip-hop remained. In its own way, that's what mattered. It didn't need the difference between Corner and Dayton, because in the end, the music was so different that it stood out in its own way.

It borders on electronica. It borders on pop at points, but it's still dark enough to warrant being reasonably downtempo. The tracks on this album are amongst my favourites done by Sneaker Pimps. The follow-up, Bloodsport would end up sounding like a proto-IAMX, Corner's current project. The previous album had only been a stepping stone. This was true musicianship. This was a final fuck-you to the decade. Hell, if we were all going to die out in some Y2K related mishap, then this album would have been testament to the brilliance of our minds - Remember when we sent Coldplay and Bowie or whatever into space, well, we should really have sent Sneaker Pimps - Low Five.

Personally, I think this is not only the soundtrack of a generation; summing up the end of the nineties with its grunge and its hardcore, its jungle and its dying post-punk acts, but it's also the soundtrack for a new generation, one brought up in recession and war and hate. It's dark, but it's not depressing. It's disco, if the mirrorball wasn't working and the bouncer didn't look like he wanted to kill you.

Going out on a limb, it's probably Chris Corner's best work. It has its weak moments, yes, but, it's got a good mix on it in a way that many albums don't seem to think about. I fail to get bored by it. It's beautiful, but hardly ever talked about. It is to the world of albums what Yeats' Cloths of Heaven is to the world of poetry.

Overall: 8/10 - It's dark, it's highly underrated as an album, and it deserves the recognition that it should have had a decade ago.

Top Track: Low Five

Bristol, 1994. A phenomena is about to be released, a album that will cause a band to transcend its genre and become part of hipster parlance for years to come; propelling the band to relative fame. This Mercury Prize winning debut saw off the likes of Oasis, fellow trip-hopper Tricky, and big boys like Van Morrison, to become one of the few albums I'd dub a necessary evolution of British music. Portishead released Dummy.

Portishead's debut was far more than just a necessary evolution in British music, following on from the darkness that was post-punk, with the drug-fuelled addiction of Madchester, to compete with the guitar-addled blight on the face of the country that was Brit-Pop. It had to stand out, and, coming from where it did, it managed that effortlessly. Downtempo, moody, full of an angst that the kids of the early nineties seemed to be searching for in their grunge, it came out of the left field and hit with a big impact.

What can I say personally about it? It's an album that's done a lot for me. It's probably the reason I managed to transcend from Goth to indie, because it was an easy step to go from Portishead's Dummy to the available levels of Post-Rock out in the mid-noughties, like Sigur Ros, who are pretty much pixies doing a happier, mumbly version of trip-hop. It's an album I personally love; without it, where would we be?

It's filled with songs that people need to hear. It's a musical education. Not in the sense that it expands your mind and makes you think about a terribly important period in music, like Rock and Roll or the Blues, but because it's just musically brilliant. Before this, there wasn't anything that really sounded anything like it, as far as I am aware. And after Dummy came out, there seemed to be an explosion of this kind of sound in trip-hop and in gothic electronica. It was genre defining. It was music.

The lowest it gets is the slightest of troughs with Wandering Star and It Could Be Sweet. Even then, they are only a small irrigation ditch, adding to the beauty. Surrounding that are perfect fields of electronic music. So go, and walk amongst them, and enjoy it for what it's worth.


Overall: 10/10 - A defining moment in musical history, or at least in this genre. Without it, there would be a void. It's truly a diamond in the rough; a jewel in the crown of British music. All hail, the Dummy.

Top Track: Biscuit

In Bristol, 1991, a movement began. It wasn't until later it was given its official name, but it started with a group of layabouts who took two styles of music and fused them effortlessly in what is now known as trip-hop, an underappreciated genre in this day and age. That band was Massive Attack, and they started the ball rolling with their album Blue Lines.

Listening to Blue Lines, you really pick up a sense of where a lot of the bands who followed took their basis from. It's definitely the granddaddy of all trip-hop albums. If proto-punk was what eventually gave us the Sex Pistols, then Blue Lines is the stepping stone which gave us this wonderful genre.

Blue Lines fuses the rhymes of hip-hop with downtempo rhythms which just soothe the soul, and at the same time meld together in a way that prompts thought and outgrowth in the listener. It's hard to describe, because it's not really the definitive article. It's not trip-hop as sold by Portishead, or Sneaker Pimps circa Becoming X; it's like the missing link between the moody early 90s stuff, and the more wordy noughties era. In effect, it's the fork in the road where a trip hop artist can say "I want to be like Shara Nelson" or "I want to rhyme like Daddy G".

Personally, I've been wowed by this album. It's a rare, unmistakable feeling when you delve back to the roots of a genre and find everything suddenly falls into place; when you suddenly understand how one anomaly fits into the puzzle, because of how it was and not how it is. From slow, bouncing songs like Lately, to fully-orchestrated dance wonders like Unfinished Sympathy, via the downtempo hip-hop of Blue Lines, this album is a melting pot, and I love it for that. None of it jars; none of it suddenly breaks the effortless flow of the rhyme and rhythm. It's just good. Simple as.


Overall: 10/10 - It's effortless; it's simple; it's a few guys from Bristol trying their hand at hip-hop with a more moody, poetic outlook, and what we got in return was an album that would define a genre. Simply amazing.

Top Track: Unfinished Sympathy (honourable mention to Blue Lines)

As of this week, I'm taking on a bit of a change to the blog. I've decided to see if I can fill out the (roughly) 35 weeks before I go on hiatus whilst I spend a year in Italy and Spain improving my linguistic skills. So, for the next 35 weeks, I'll try to delve backwards in time, and look at some of the different genres of music, using a wide array of artists.

So, for this week, I've chosen Trip-Hop, the weirdly soothing, sort-of-psychadelic late 90s sound that originated with experimental acts like Bjork, and progenitors like Massive Attack, and carried on through heavyweights of the genre like Portishead and Morcheeba. It carried on into the noughties with the big players still involved, as much as groups like Gorillaz, Sneaker Pimps and Télépopmusik. It's just not one of the most widely recognized genres; a lot of people seem to like it, but even so they're all spread out, unlike other genres.

This week's articles will include:

Télépopmusik: Angel Music - A seminal hit from the French trip-hoppers of the noughties. Due for an appearance again this year, with a new album, these guys have always hidden slightly under my radar, but are well worth the listen.

Portishead: Dummy - Arguably the album that began it all; the success that is. It's sound is well-known. Kids have been well-versed in this album, but, they seem to have sunk back into hipster obscurity lately. It would be a crime to discuss trip-hop without this beauty.

Sneaker Pimps: Splinter - Nearing the turn of the century, Sneaker Pimps, one of the mainstays of the original Trip-Hop movement turned to vocalist Kelli Dayton and said "We want to do it our way, and not sound like Portishead" and what they churned out with Chris Corner on vocals was something unique. It was this.

Massive Attack: Blue Lines - Back to where it all began in Bristol. Without this album, the foundations of trip-hop would be slightly wobbly, resting on the shoulders of other Bristolians Portishead.

Gorillaz: Demon Days - I suppose this is where the line blurs, where trip becomes hip, and hop becomes pop. Damon Albarn of Blur takes his little side project to stellar heights with this album, and honestly, as pop as it is, it really does warrant a good listening to!


I hope you'll tune in for the next five days worth of blogs.