Lascelles - Rock Oil (1996)

artist: Lascelles
album: Rock Oil
release date: 1996
label: orange egg
tags: trip-hop, experimental
boo

1. A Little Stranger / 2. One Two / 3. Alone / 4. Kill Me / 5. Original Static / 6. Faded / 7. The Control Centre / 8. Butterfly / 9. Vegas / 10. Got the Driver / 11. Do You Like My Buddha / 12. Backwards / 13. Soft Hallucination / 14. Ill World / 15. After the End / 16. In a Space / 17. The Air Is Shit / 18. Put Out / 19. Rock Oil / 20. Touched With Love

This very rare/obscure album, Rock Oil by Lascelles, is one of the most experimentalist I heard in trip-hop. It is very curious that it was released in 1996 - only 2 years after Portishead's Dummy and Massive Attack's Protection! You could describe it as "more historically important than pleasant to listen to" - however, unlike some 1998-1999 albums which manage to pull off a completely experimental trip-hop style, Lascelles just alternate between somewhat straightforward trip-hop and crazy melt moments.

Sin - Absinth (2005)

artist: Sin
album: Absinth
release date: 2005
label: abuse industries
tags: trip-hop, darkwave, experimental
tears went dry

1. Love is Blue / 2. Sex is More / 3. Devildivine / 4. So Sad / 5. My Plants Are Enough / 6. Poem for Raphaelle / 7. Wishful Thinking / 8. Film Another Flower / 9. Der Rosmarienbaum / 10. Can't Help Falling in Love
+ CD of remixes

File under "acquired taste". Sin is a special band that few heard of and few can appreciate.

Antenne - #3 (2008)

artist: Antenne
album: #3
release date: 2008
label: helmet room recordings
tags: electronic, experimental, trip-hop, ambient
put your gloves on

1. Long to Kiss / 2. Gloves On / 3. Days Into Nights / 4. Ttreaa#7 / 5. Blue Light / 6. Ernst / 7. End / 8. All of Us

The long-awaited "#3" is another step forward and a refinement of the hallmark Antenne style from the previous albums. Just about everything you've heard before is also here, but in even better shape. It doesn't get more blissfully depressive than "Gloves On", "Long to Kiss" and "Blue Light". "#1" may have more nostalgic value to me, but it is "#3" that hits the creative peak. Stay tuned, the follow-up album, "#4", is "in progress" and might be released in... 2016!

Antenne - #2 (2002)

artist: Antenne
album: #2
label: korm plastics
release date: 2002
tags: electronic, experimental, idm, trip-hop, ambient
dream debris

1. Black Eyed Dog / 2. Not Sad / 3. Annex Aug / 4. Across the Way / 5. Dead Dreams / 6. Clearly Wrong / 7. Sunwalk

Purists could argue that, especially on this album, Antenne has retracted anything that could possibly recall trip-hop (probably with the exception of time signatures). And my argument is: why should we care as long as what we get is great? Plain '90s Bristolian beats wouldn't have managed to pull off the job of the day, as what we have here is a personal and strongly oneiric universe. Rhythms are more fragile than ever and the songs seem painfully abstract. But it is actually like an excellent abstract expressionist work of art that seems to make sense in spite of what it actually is. "Sunwalk" is a crowning achievement of this kind of approach - however, no need to worry as "Not Sad" and "Dead Dreams" come with the exact kind of expressive minimalism that is by now a staple of Antenne's style. Well done follow-up to the incredibly good "#1".

Antenne - #1 (2000)

artist: Antenne
album: #1
release date: 2000
label: korm plastics
tags: electronic, trip-hop, idm, experimental
quiet snow

1. Here to Go / 2. Like Rain / 3. Let Me Ride It / 4. Whispering / 5. PPG hold prg. 11 / 6. Moving Slow / 7. Something Not to Do / 8. Memo

If you have a genuine interest in what happened to trip-hop after Dummy and Mezzanine, then you have no reason whatsoever to miss out on Antenne's albums. If you think Dummy and Mezzanine aren't sophisticated enough, this might satisfy your appetite - the basic forms, conventions of trip-hop are bend into something else, a lot more electronic, quite minimalist, with poetic force first and foremost (just listen to the winter lullaby that is "Whispering" or the brooding "Like Rain", in which Marie Louise Munck's echoes actually fall like rain) and with a fair share of sparse instrumental moments ("Let Me Ride It", "PPG hold prg. 11") that all contribute to a certain charm. It is a cold, rather bleak record, but you can also detect a sense of humanity in all this.

Sorem Sound System - Sorem Sound System

artist: Sorem Sound System
album: Sorem Sound System
tags: trip-hop, downtempo, experimental
feel it

A Piece of Dismind / Beautiful Spirit / Denon / Feeling It / Screaming Black (Heike Duh Vocal Mix) / Screaming Black / Short Touch / Staendchen (remix) / Symbol 49 / The Day Where

One of the most elusive bands in the history of the trip-hop underground, Sorem Sound System have no official record as I know of, this being a bootleg made up of every song that has circulated in the last few years over the Internet (minus two other songs that are only sampled on tripofagia, nowhere else to be found). It looks like the band has broken up a long time ago - which is sad. Initially a grunge rock band apparently, Sorem Sound System have suddenly grown a fascination for trip-hop and for the classy downtempo and nu-jazz of the likes of St. Germain and Peace Orchestra (Screaming Black is actually just a St. Germain song with vocals on top, but both the Tricky-esque rapper and the female vocalist Heike Duh do a pretty good job at it). However, some of these tracks are rougher than that - The Day Where or Short Touch are up there with the best things in dark experimental trip-hop this turn of the century. Not to mention the masterpiece that is Beautiful Spirit. If they were still around, Sorem Sound System would have come to making at least one great album.

Coppé - Nauru (2003)

artist: Coppé
album: Nauru
release date: 2003
label: mango + sweet rice
tags: trip-hop, idm, experimental, ambient
you pocket mermaid

1. Intro: Spunge Noho Nani / 2. Pakalolo / 3. Audiolly / 4. Blue (Remix by Plaid) / 5. Humu Humu Picasso Fish / 6. La Liquid Lizard / 7. Sin . Coppe . Ted . / 8. Ala Moana (Interlude) / 9. Paper Soap / 10. Wombat / 11. Durango / 12. Frozen Fog / 13. Blue (Remix by Dr. Jakobson) / 14. Flapper Girl / 15. Ala Moana

Bjork not experimental enough for you? Check out this sweet madness of an album.

Milpatte / Serge Bulot - April Orchestra Vol. 47 (1982)

artists: Milpatte , Serge Bulot
album: April Orchestra Vol. 47
release date: 1982
label: april music
tags: library music, electronic, experimental, proto-idm, exotica, modern classical
seehear

Side A (Milpatte)
1. Tregao / 2. Mistira / 3. Cirka / 4. Spontz / 5. Cruzer / 6. Specif / 7. Lotor / 8. Sybir / 9. Carpal / 10. Livel

Side B (Serge Bulot)
1. Jungle's Orchestra / 2. Baroque Electrique / 3. Pipoune's Dance / 4. Suite Lydienne (part 1) / 5. Suite Lydienne (part 2) / 6. Chords Meeting / 7. Pluie Lunaire / 8. Miroirs du Crepuscule