1994 was thirty years ago. That's heavy, Doc.
The OJ Simpson trial took up most of 1994. Nelson Mandela became the South Africa's first black President. There was war in Bosnia, genocide in Rwanda, Nancy Kerrigan took it on the kneecaps, and there was an earthquake In Northridge, California that measured 6.7 on the Richter scale, killed 57 people, injured thousands and led to billions of dollars in damage.
Oh, and I got engaged to my future wife in 1994. What a year.
We haven't done a theme week for a while, so while I'm in a nostalgia kinda mood, I thought we could look back on some of the best albums that came out of this weird, powerful and amazing year.
It's 1994 week on CSOTD.
First up is the album Dummy, by the Bristol based electronicia band Portishead, one of the founding voices of Trip-Hop.
Dummy was released on the 22nd of August, 1994. Haunting, atmospheric, dark and lush, Dummy is characterized by slow, breakbeat rhythms, heavy use of sampling, and a fusion of live instruments with turntable grooves. It drew inspiration from hip-hop production techniques (like scratching and looping) as well as older genres like jazz and film-noir soundtracks, forming into the eerie, melancholic sound that we now know as Trip-Hop.
Alienation, heartbreak, and yearning never sounded so good as they did through Beth Gibbons' vocals. Her sometimes fragile, often haunted and always soulful performance gives the music an emotional depth that might had been missing if the focus was dominated just by studio tricks and turntable skills. Dummy evokes a sense of longing, despair, and nostalgia, and that's mostly because of Beth's inspired vocals.
Along with Massive Attack’s "Blue Lines", and 1995's Maxinquaye by Tricky, "Dummy" helped define trip-hop as a genre. Its unique blending of hip-hop beats, downtempo electronica and melancholy vocals was groundbreaking. And still sounds fresh and cool to this day.
Stick around, this is going to be a great week, friends, I guarantee it.
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