“The core thing to remember is that your beats are slow - 90 bpm maximum - and they are filthy”: Unpacking the dark, sample-based sound of trip-hop

Akai.

Trip-hop might have been a term invented by a journalist, but it ended up being a handy umbrella for a lot of artists to thrive under, plus it gave a city a musical identity and a lot of music production technology a purpose. Welcome to the most laid-back of nineties grooves: trip-hop.

In June 1994, Mixmag's Andy Pemberton described the burgeoning Bristol and London trip-hop scene as, “a deft fusion of head-nodding beats, supa-phat bass and an obsessive attention to the kind of other-worldly sounds usually found on acid house records”.