SkeeK said:
Essential Trip-Hop Albums:
Massive Attack: Mezzanine
Portishead: Dummy
Kruder and Dorfmeister: the K&D Sessions
Lamb: Lamb
Air: Moon Safari (though this is more downtempo)
Massive Attack: Blue Lines
Aim: Cold Water Music
Everything But The Girl: Temperamental
Sneaker Pimps: Becoming X
Tricky: Maxinquaye
Massive Attack: Protection
Goldfrapp: Utopia
Thievery Corporation: Mirror Conspiracy
UNKLE: Psyence Fiction
Portishead: s/t
man.. there's just too many albums to recommend.
True that. Those are essential downbeat albums.
there are various styles, basically the Bristolers started in the Dug Out Club .. already late 80s, Mark Stewart and the Pop Group, DJ Milo, Tricky etc. The first commercial wave of triphop albums like Portisheads Dummy or Morcheeba or the first Massive attack album start of the 90s. Then Tricky left Massive Attack and put out various great albums with lotsa dark & moody sounds and with Martina, who later did her own thing.
In Vienna it came up a little later, but with Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister who also do various side projects like Tosca, Vienna quickly established.
Essential albums I´d add to the above list
Tricky - those 4 albums are a must have
Maxinquaye
Pre Millenium Tension
Nearly God
Blowback
Massive Attack
Blue Lines
100th Window
Martina Topley-Bird
Quixotic
Lamb
What Sound
Morcheeba
Who Can You Trust
Big Calm
Fragments of Freedom
Moloko (no one has mentioned Do You Like my Tight Sweater, one of the funkiest downbeat albums around.. old stuff, Moloko are more into other styles now, like on the Statues album)
Herbalizer
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ninja Tune.. is a label and they got a couple of those jazzy style bands like
Aqua etc..,
Amon Tobin;
Hedfunk;
Up, Bustle & Out
also check the !K7 label, they did the K&D albums, they got lots of downbeat/ electronica stuff, artists like Ursula Rucker.
there are a couple of chilly hiphop albums like Bahamadia´s Kollage; she also collaborated with Roni Size on New Forms
if you happen to like the Kruder&Dorfmeister style also get their DJ Kicks album, lotsa remixing and delaaaaaaays
that should be enough for a start,..