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ConcertAndVinylAuthor
When I reflect on our last Record Club session, a Trip Hop Special, I wonder if what attracts me to it in the first place isn’t its dark side, perhaps even its goth side.
Hear me out: the most goth concert of my life was Portishead in 2014 at La Route du Rock Festival in France. Yes, it was Apocalypse Now. Not only because the mud and piss were well above our ankles after a gigantic storm, but also because the show itself was intense, with a dark atmosphere, images and videos of war projected behind the band, and the saddest Portishead songs piling up throughout the performance. It felt like one long cry in the dark, exactly what I love. As a goth fan, it was a perfect ten for me.
Looking back, Portishead’s second album (but the first and third as well) definitely has a dark, goth feel, right down to its sleeve and overall design. The same goes for Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, with Liz Fraser (of Cocteau Twins—a goth band, at least on their first album), almost heavy metal guitars, and that incredible bass, especially on the end-of-the-world opening track “Angel” (still my favourite song ever). Even the follow-up album, 100th Window, is very dark.
The same applies to Tricky. He has always embraced darkness. Even his recent concert in The Hague (see Tricky, Paard, June26) was mostly goth, sometimes almost goth rock, with Tricky alone on stage as the singer, full of anger and soul at the same time.
Again, if you dig into the most important Trip Hop albums, you find a clear goth connection: Sneaker Pimps’ Becoming X, Archive’s Londinium, UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction, Alpha’s Come From Heaven, to name just a few. This is cold, dark music.
Of course, there is also a more commercial or mainstream side of Trip Hop, with bands like Morcheeba or Hooverphonic, which is much more pop and not really dark or goth at all.
Now I realise why Trip Hop always felt so familiar to me. It wasn’t a departure from the music I already loved, it was another branch of the same dark family. It belonged naturally alongside my post-punk, shoegaze, industrial and goth records.
Podcast available here (French language): Session 9 (FR) – Spécial Trip Hop
