Inspiration

 Hellooo!

Before diving into the research and nitty-gritty's of the analysis and techniques, I just wanted to listen to some music in the trip-hop genre. As I mentioned in my last post, I am inspired by Massive Attack's "Mezzanine" as it came out at a similar time as "Dummy" - just four years later. I listened to the whole album throughout, and some stand-outs were "Angel", "Teardrop" and "Black Milk". I then listened to all of "Dummy" and, as hard as it was to pick just a few stand-out tracks, the ones I enjoyed most were "Glory Box" (duh), "Sour Times", "Strangers", and "Numb" but the whole album is a pleasure to listen to. 

Both albums were similar in their dark, almost cinematic atmospheres - a lot of reverb on the instrumentation and many feelings of melancholy, mystery and tension throughout. There was noticeably a lot of tape hiss, and the EQ gave the songs (generally) a lo-fi, vintage feel. The tempos were around 70-120 on both, with the drum patterns being heavily processed and looped. Many of the vocals emphasised mood over clarity, too, with the lyrics being secondary to the melancholic, raw feel of the vocals. There's also a lot of space, which I think creates a lot of tension and highlights the "imperfections", such as noise and vinyl scratches. I will be keeping a lot of these things at the forefront of my mind when planning and recording my remake of "Eliza".

That's all for this post - just some listening and reflecting. See you in the next one!

-D.