The vinyl chapter: three ways record culture shaped trip-hop

Musical melting pot

1 Trip-hop is a definitive example of a genre in which disparate musical influences collide to create something new and fresh. It’s no surprise that so many trip-hop pioneers are avid record collectors. Some of the influences are obvious, most notably hip-hop and dub, but others aren’t so immediately apparent. The sound might not necessarily be evident from the music, but various trip-hop acts cited punk and new wave as a major influence, not just in terms of the DIY attitude and its obvious parallels in sound system culture, but also musically and via sinister, slightly paranoid lyrical content. Both Massive Attack and Tricky covered tracks by Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure, while Massive Attack’s Blue Lines album cover includes a nod to the artwork of the Stiff Little Fingers album Inflammable Material. Portishead, meanwhile, claim to have more in common with Nirvana than dance acts.

Sampling

2 Sampling is a huge part of hip-hop culture and that approach crosses over to trip-hop just as well. What better example than the genre-defining Isaac Hayes sample which underpins both Tricky’s Hell Is Round the Corner and Portishead’s Glory Box. An iconic sample, used by countless other artists over the years, including Canadian singer Alessia Cara on her huge 2015 trip-hop throwback hit, Here.

Creative approaches

3 Perhaps the most extreme example of vinyl culture and its impact on the sound of trip-hop comes courtesy of Portishead’s Geoff

Barrow, who went to great lengths to make the group’s debut album sound authentically gritty and retro, recording drum parts and instruments to tape before pressing them to vinyl, scuffing up the records before using them to scratch with, resampling them and incorporating their sound into tracks like Mysterons and Roads.