Trip Hop Exposure Week: EZ3kiel

     Welcome to the second installment of Trip Hop Exposure, we have another very short one artist post for you but rest assured the tunes are top notch and the writing is horrible, which is, I understand, everything you've come to expect.

     Formed in 1993 EZ3kiel is a dub/electroacoustic group from Tours, France. But what is eleectroacoustic you might be wondering, well for now lets just explain it as another facet of trip hop. Apparently they chose the name Ezekiel in reference to Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino, and upon discovering that the domain with the same name had been taken they did what any self respecting internet user would, added some numbers in. So because Google translate is what it is I can tell you that from 1993 to now the band has around four members and recorded seven albums including a live tour album/dvd. But again if you could turn your attention to the 2003 album, Barb4ry, we can begin today's lesson.

     Before we get too far click the album link above for an old download from Sharebee, the password for the file should be secretmusicbox, all one word, if you encounter any problems feel free to leave a complaint which will promptly be rebutted with a recommendation to procreate with yourself and find the link on your own. So unpleasantness aside Barb4ry is a masterpiece of electric music, and demonstrates how far one can take the label "trip hop". Now we know that trip hop is usually the instrumental and downtempo is usually the vocal tracks, well with those labels we start to add "dub" which, you guessed it, means that besides an amazing cultural sound we also gets a wee bit of bass. To completely understand what I mean you should hear the whole album but from the first moment you'll get what I mean by cultural, the eleven tracks that make up this golden album ooze sophistication and that traditional violin/accordion/whatever else they play in Europe tune. The samples are top notch, the vocals are just intense enough to complement the overall sound and who ever was behind the controls had a metric ass tonne of fun. Unlike other trip hop this music will not calm you down, this isn't "chillout" music, this is a blood fueled, adrenaline pumping ride through the mad house perfect for those days you find yourself driving to war not work, be prepared.

Trip Hop Exposure Week: Unkle

     Alright so as some of you may know I was planning on doing an educational post about trip hop/downtempo. Well that was extremely hard to do, for one it was a serious bitch to locate original source material, plus have you ever tried to define trip hop? So instead I just decided to do a small post for every day this (work) week, and yes we're now four days in but I've just started raking in album after album of amazing material.

     I started getting interested in trip hop when I stumbled onto A|Fragile|Hope and discovered Saltillo. From there I ran a few (four or five) torrents put together by a now unresponsive blog Secret Music Box, these compilations tempted me to dig a little deeper and since then... well lets say my hard drive is straining.

     But I digress, Unkle, a trip hop classic is today's featured artist. So Unkle or U.N.K.L.E. are a British duo consisting of James Lavelle and Tim Goldsworthy. Formed in 1994 these chaps haven't stopped yet and have produced many an amazing album under legendary producers such as DJ Shadow. But today I'd like to turn your ear to their 1998 album Psyence Fiction.

     Psyence Fiction was their debut studio album, trip hop gold. Just the first song features some 60 odd samples from Massive Attack to Radiohead and back again, and the original American release had fourteen tracks, you do the math. One amazing thing about this album is the variety, with trip hop nothing ever gets stale but with beats ranging from old school hip hop to full orchestral masterpieces that might have come from a movie, this album never fails to dissapoint. So grab it up and stay tuned for more.