“Good midnight to you!” Thus begins the new Moderator LP, Midnight Madness, with a retro movie dialogue snippet heralding precisely the massive payload of dope that album preview tracks Wish I Was Dead and Unspoken suggested it would deliver. Not that there was ever much doubt given previous long-playing efforts, 2019’s The Mosaics and the previous year’s The World
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Tag Archives: trip hop
MODERATOR: Midnight Madness LP
KAMAU KURU: Oxydental
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Say hello to London-based producer Kamau Kuru – someone you’ll definitely be hearing a lot more of on the strength of debut LP Oxydental. ‘Oxydental’? Yep – this one very much lets you get your teeth into the sampled sounds of the occident laid over drum breaks for our man is as keen to draw on the sounds of his mixed heritage as he is inspired by the likes of
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DON LEISURE: Valery’s Fate
It’s been a bit of a cinematic-slash-psych day on MB today and the monkey figured if it ain’t broke why fix it? So here’s news of the new single from Don Leisure – Valery’s Fate. Don Leisure is, of course, one half of First Word Records signings The Darkhouse Family – no strangers to making atmospheric beats influenced by the sounds from way out – which describes Valery’s Fate perfectly
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HOWIE B feat. DJ WORDY: Thats Down + video
When Howie B helped kick start the whole trip-hop thing in the 90s, did he still think it would be a ‘thing’ a quarter century later – or that – as with new single, Thats Down, he’d still be making it? I say trip-hop, the presence of Chinese DMC champion, DJ Wordy, and his turntablist skills along with an ambient electro/ techno sound palette pushes the envelope enough you’ll be
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BILLA QAUSE: Somehow Someway
Here it is then, the new LP from the Mind The Wax stable – Billa Qause’s Somehow Someway – which you could be forgiven thinking was something unearthed from the late nineties. I’m pretty sure when Bristol replaced Seattle as the city on which the music press’s attention was fixated in the mid-nineties that no-one was expecting a largely instrumental, slowed-down ambient form of hip-
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DJ MOYA: II305
Long-time MB readers will know that while the greater proportion of what gets featured on the site is aimed squarely at the dancefloor, occasionally something a little more chin-stroky makes it past MB’s strict door policy. That of which we speak goes by many names of course – instrumental hip-hop, downtempo breaks, trip-hop and (if you’re James
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BNC: Remember That EP
It’s been a while but MC BnC a.k.a Bruises n Cuts is back with a new drop – the Remember That EP on his label MBRD a.k.a. My Boom Raises The Dead Records. Don’t go expecting his ‘boom’ to be all fast and raucous though. No this’ll raise the dead by dint of reminding them of lazy, hazy days in the light…skateboarding at the park…staring at the blue sky…barbecues, afternoons on the beach
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JON KENNEDY: Enchantica (2017)
While you wait for the next full-length release from Jon Kennedy, he gets his trip-hop on with atmospheric new single Enchantica. The track is built around all-enveloping organic bass and drums as washes of sax and xylophone drift in and out of focus along with what might be a cut-up vocal loop from Bobby Darin’s version of Nature Boy wafting around in the background too. The
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ANDYFELLAZ: Beatbop Street (2017)
Despite its inception and heyday in the mid-to-late nineties, the downtempo/ cinematic/ trip-hop incarnation of breakbeat music refuses to die and while it may not be flavour of the month anymore, there seems nevertheless to be an inexhaustible supply of it. Perhaps, it’s the ambient nature of the music, the fact that you can put almost any sound behind a decent drum break and get away with it
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JON KENNEDY: Ha! EP (2017)
Jon Kennedy is back with full length album Ha! in the summer and here’s the Ha! EP by way of a teaser. Clearly not a man for long release names these days, he makes up for the brevity of the title with the number of remixes on this drop – a mighty eight no less, plus bonus exclusive cut Lord Tarries feat. Coreysan on vocal duties. Of course with that many remixes you can cover a lot of
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