Downtempo (1993): Tempo brought down as a principle of pleasure: grooves between 80 and 110, round basses, jazz and soul samples, electronic music sitting back and relaxing.…
Trip-Hop (1991): Trip-hop took shape in Bristol between 1991 and 1995: hip-hop slowed under the English rain, dub basslines, ghostly soul vocals, and a melancholy built from…
Bristol Sound (1988): The local root of trip hop: the Wild Bunch collective in the 1980s, sound systems, dub, punk and soul in the same port city. Smith and Mighty lay down its…
Lo-Fi Hip Hop (2003): Lo-fi hip hop is dusty instrumental hip hop that became, through YouTube and its lofi hip hop to study radios, the background soundtrack of an entire…
Chill-Out (1990): Chill-out was born in the back rooms of English raves around 1990, when the KLF released Chill Out and clubs began opening separate rooms where dancers could…
Lounge (1996): Lounge is the 1990s recovery of 1950s and 60s easy listening: cocktails, exotica and bossa nova run through the sampler, equal parts irony and genuine…
Balearic (1983): Balearic is less a genre than a DJ doctrine: at Amnesia in Ibiza between 1985 and 1988, Alfredo played everything, languid rock, dub, italo, strange pop, as…
Ambient House (1989): England, 1989 to 1991: house music set adrift, pads and travel samples floating over discreet kicks, the invention of the chill-out back room as an art form…
Nu Jazz (1996): Jazz reread through machines around 2000: broken beats, house and hip hop placed under extended harmonies, spanning Viennese studios, the clubs of…
Psybient (2001): Psybient is the ambient wing of psytrance culture: cosmic pads, dub basslines, fractal textures and ethnic instruments, the chill zone of festivals grown into…
Chillwave (2009): The summer of 2009 blogosphere: bedroom pop veiled in reverb and VHS nostalgia, detuned synths, drowned vocals, memories of summers never lived. Washed Out,…
Folktronica (2003): Folktronica is the folding of folk music into electronic production at the turn of the 2000s: acoustic guitars chopped up on a laptop, clicks and textures…
