Has the genre of music loosely known as "trip-hop" faded away or has it been incorporated into other genres/labels?

• Has the genre of music loosely known as "trip-hop" faded away or has it been incorporated into other genres/labels? In the hope of avoiding chat-filter tendencies lets start with the acknowledgment that the whole notion of labeling genres of music has been and will always be somewhat suspect. I don't think many of the bands associated with the label (Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky, early Morcheeba and others) were super-fond of the term either. Having said that, there are some themes that were common in these bands' music such as using loop-based bass and synth samples (often slower tempo although not always) , incorporating effects such as echos/flanging into the rhythm of the song, sometimes mashing up electric guitars with scratching and hip-hop based beats, lyrical themes of disillusionment/distrust and so on. Has this style of music gone the way of the surf rock genre of the 50's? Or did it just evolve/dissipate into some other format? Are there any new bands who release full albums in the genre? It would not surprising to hear I'm simply out of touch and most people know that trip-hop simply morphed into _____.

• Answer:

  some friends and I run a downtempo night at a local Boston club, generally catering to folks who picked up a taste for Portishead and Massive Attack along with, say, the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance and Delerium -- you may know the type: urban Burners, aging ravers looking to dance to something slower, grown up goth kids who got omnivorous about dark atmospheric music, etc. We've been running this particular night for nigh on five years, and prior to that spun at various places from 1997 onwards, so ... Generally speaking (and at the risk of sounding like a Pandora genome tech) I think that what was called trip hop can be split into three different sounds depending on your primal inspiration: Massive Attack - emphasis on dub, hiphop influences, minimal vocals Portishead - emphasis on samples, jazz influences, significant female vocals Coldcut - turntablist, hiphop and jazz influences, vocals are all sample based Looked at this way, there is some common musical ground, but it's relatively obvious that the label was more of a lazy shorthand for sample-heavy electronic music coming out of Bristol and London in the early/mid-90's that was kind of (wrongly) pegged as the UK answer to American hiphop. The sounds continued to evolve and branch from each other, so Portishead leads one into Morcheeba and Hooverphonic, while the Coldcut sound leads you to Ninja Tune's stable of instrumental turntablists, and Massive Attack takes one into the realms of dubstep. Across that spectrum, comparing, say, DJ Vadim or Bassnectar to Jem would be a little tough, but one can at least trace some of their influences to a twisted little nucleus of inspiration in the British music scene circa 1993. What do we play nowadays at our night? lots of the stuff above (Massive Attack, Jem, Bassnectar, etc.) plus Amon Tobin, Beats Antique (the whole tribal bellydance thing isn't specifically related but it kind of rides a separate stream that flows alongside), Thievery Corp, Niyaz, Royksopp, Boards of Canada, Goldfrapp, Natacha Atlas, Squarepusher, Ulrich Schnauss, RJD2, Gorillaz, etc. So, yeah, kind a crazy quilt of sub-120 bpm stuff with some breaks, or no breaks, some girls singing, some dub, some jazz, a little eastern percussion, and a bit of what some folks still call IDM; but each of them is still, somehow, someone's answer to the question of "can you play something a little trip-hoppy?" ... well, maybe not so much with the Boards of Canada, but 'Hi-Scores' still packs the floor ...