Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy (V1)

Hey guys,

I'm Peter, the new blogger on animationmusicvolume. I am a hipster from Fairfax, Virginia and enjoy a good variety of music that I hope to bring to here. I wanna add that I am a little bit different than everyone else on here because I am a bigger electronic music listener.

First off I wanna make my first post of a band that I have been listening to and following for a few years now. Thievery Corporation, a trip-hop duo based out of the nation's capitol of Washington, D.C. I was first introduced to them while on a vacation trip in Hawaii by two 40 year old surfers who ran a para-sailing company. I would say that that's a great way to be introduced to a band right? Back to the duo, Thievery Corporation has used their music to take a stand in political scenes around the world with some of their tracks like "Amerimacka."

Anyway, this is their second debut album. It was released in 2000 and had one of their biggest hits "Lebanese Blonde," which is included in the OST of the movie Garden State. This album is a lot more down tempo then some of their other ones though, so keep that in mind. If you are a fan of trip-hop then I would recommend giving this album a shot and trying their other stuff.

Download the album here or buy it here.

Saltillo - Ganglion (FLAC)

I didn't really appreciate trip-hop until very recently, after a fellow blogger here at animationmusicvolume posted Portishead's Third. After having my mind blown, I went back and listened to all the trip-hop albums that I had neglected over the years. Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, and all the giants of the genre now became more relevant to my taste than ever before. So you can imagine the fascination that ensued when I revisited this masterpiece.

Saltillo's Ganglion is full of unique and heavy beats, but it yet retains the downtempo feel that I've come to know and love in electronic music, so it's like a meeting point between the mellow Boards of Canada-esque mellowness and the twisting melodies that many trip-hop artists make use of. The album's opener, "A Necessary End" starts with a somber stringed instrument that hits me like a truck. The inevitable beat and samples start to tug at you like some sort of anxiousness and the song manipulates your feelings with thought-provoking quotes and samples, and it almost feels dramatic.

The entire album plays with your emotions, and is truly a wonderful listening experience. This is one LP that deserves more attention.

Download in V0 here and in FLAC here.
Buy it here.

Portishead - Dummy (FLAC)

When Beth Gibbons sings, "I'm so tired, of playing – playing with this bow and arrow," you know what she means. Her voice is seductive and inviting; intimate and elemental. Every word that spills from her mouth is hypnotic, and every instrument and percussive sound that supports it is only given context by what Gibbons reveals.

Download.

Portishead - Third (FLAC)

Third is a hauntingly atmospheric album by influential trip-hop group Portishead in 2008, and it was their first since their self-titled album eleven years prior. The first time I listened to this album was when I was just discovering trip-hop, and I was completely and utterly blown away. I wanted more like it, immediately. Then I found out that Third is quite unlike most trip-hop albums, at least from what I've heard. It's dark, it's mysterious, it's lonely, it's melancholy, and at times uneasy in its tone. Yet at the same time it's undeniably beautiful. Beth Gibbons teeters between sultry and heartbreaking throughout the entire run. Her voice juxtaposed against what could be considered unfitting and out of place beats strangely works to their benefit in a huge way. Every time you listen to this album you'll notice something you didn't before, or something will click with you in an entirely different way than it did last time you listened, giving it a huge amount of re-playability. I can't tell you how many times I've listened to front-to-back in this week alone, and still I am never bored of it. The entire album is amazing from start to finish, but it reaches it's peak with Machine Gun and it doesn't let up until the end. I honestly can't think of a single complaint I have with Third.

If you're into electronic, but have yet discovered trip-hop, this is a great place to start. But I think just about anyone can find something to enjoy here. I've never heard anything but praise for this album, so give it a listen and I'm sure you'll join the club.

Highlights: Hunter, The Rip, Magic Doors

Download here.

I battle my thoughts, I find I can't explain
I've traveled so far but somehow feel the same.

Bowery Electric - Lushlife (V0)

Bowery Electric have been said to defy easy definition, but Lushlife, the final release by New York City Kranky comtemporaries Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener proudly advertises its dizzying and seductive trip-hop roots. Schwedener's voice is heavily reminiscent of Beth Gibbons of Portishead rapport, only softer and more breathy. As a whole, really, Lushlife could be compared to a softer, breathier version of Portishead's Dummy. Where the latter excels in industrialism, the former excels in fluidity. Songs veer regularly into ambience, drawing images of cities late at night, lit up but devoid of any life, of walking along a corridor by oneself with nothing but concrete in plain view.

Bowery Electric is, like most trip-hop outfits, not meant to be shaken up or danced to, but here they seem to take that ideology to an extreme, preferring instead to use hip-hop instrumentals in much the same way Boards of Canada did; to move the listener across landscapes of sound, to allow the listener to appreciate them rather than being forced to interact with them.

God's on both sides,
Thank God we make them try,
Don't wake when the camera's on you,
You, you'll go out like a freedom fighter,
You're gone like a freedom fighter.

DJ Shadow - Endtroducing..... (V0)

A record created entirely out of samples of jazz, psychedelic and hip-hop albums from DJ Shadow's own record collection, which contains more than 60,000 records. Released in 1996, two years before Massive Attack's Mezzanine, Endtroducing..... did for trip-hop what Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden or Bark Psychosis's Hex did for post-rock.

Download.

Massive Attack - Mezzanine (V0)

Stumbling through a patch of dead trees, Inertia Creeps swirls in my ears. I look to the lake. It's early morning, maybe 9 or 10 a.m. in the middle of winter. The night was so cold that the top of the lake chilled, and as the sun rises over the hills, steam gathers on the surface of the water.

Link.