Trip hop is one of my favorite forms of music. At its best, a beautiful, maybe even ethereal, female voice floats over gritty electronic music, making one of the most perfect tensions in music.

While trip hop has pretty much faded away, in its heyday I was doing the music programming for the downtempo electronic station at digital radio company Clickradio, a station I had created. The mix was probably 50 percent trip hop, along with some ambient, acid jazz, exotica and doses of alt-folk, singer/songwriter and alternative hip hop. But this playlist is pure trip hop (well, by my standards.) It's a mix of 40 tracks that represent a cross-section of the best the trip hop genre had to offer -- drawing from the dub, DJ and soul styles. Several of the tracks admittedly lack the feature that is supposed to define the genre: a slowed-down sample of a hip hop beat. I've included them because the genre became so much more than that, and they fit the feel and the culture of the genre otherwise. Lamb's work, for example, is technically jungle, and the beats are speeded up, not slowed down, but they also feature jazzy female vocals and were popular with trip hop lovers. The order is for the mix, the tracks have been sequences to work well together. It's not a ranking of the songs. I've put links on the album names to their Amazon pages, for your convenience, and perhaps a few pennies in my direction to help pay for this site. Motel Girl's Ghost Sonata was from a self-published EP that is not available -- if you email me I might be able to find it and I could let you know where to go; it's definitely worth it. Motel Girl was the best band in the Lower East Side New York scene during their brief life. Red Delicious's album links to their site on mp3.com, as they don't sell through regular distribution. Have fun, learn something, buy a few, do whatever you like with this information. Hope you find it useful.

1. Group Four - Massive Attack - Mezzanine - 1998
2. Undenied - Portishead - Portishead - 1997
3. Stem - DJ Shadow - Endtroducing... - 1996
4. Rabbit In Your Headlights - U.N.K.L.E. w/ Thom Yorke - Psyence Fiction - 1998
5. Defenceless - Waldeck - Balance of the force - 1999
6. Shining - Peace Orchestra (Peter Kruder) - Peace Orchestra - 1999
7. Overcome - Tricky - Maxinquaye - 1995
8. 6 Underground - Sneaker Pimps p/ Nellee Hooper - Becoming X - 1996
9. Fragments of Freedom - Morcheeba - Fragments of Freedom - 2000
10. Human - Goldfrapp - Felt Mountain - 2000
11. Nothin' Like Tomorrow - Supreme Beings Of Leisure - Supreme Beings Of Leisure - 2000
12. Not Every Angel - Alexkid - Bienvenida - 2001
13. Don't Go Messing - Speeka - Bespoke - 2001
14. Dum Dum Baby - Baby Fox - Dum Dum Baby - 1998
15. B Line - Lamb - Fear Of Fours - 1999
16. Ghost Sonata - Motel Girl - EP (unavailable)
17. Final Home - DJ Krush f/Esthero - Code 4109 - 2000
18. The Truth - Handsome Boy Modeling School - So...How's Your Girl? - 2000
19. Mad About You - Hooverphonic - The Magnificent Tree - 2000
20. Siren - Red Delicious - Emotional Blur - 2001
21. Air and Angels - Lotus Crown - Lotus - 1999
22. Renaissance Affair - Hooverphonic - Blue Wonder Power Milk - 1998
23. Lushlife - Bowery Electric - Lushlife - 2000
24. Filthy - Saint Etienne - The Trip Hop Test, Pt. 1 - 1995
25. Riders on the Storm (Pink Solidism) - Yonderboi - Shallow and Profound - 2001
26. In Flux - DJ Shadow - Preemptive Strike - 1998
27. Hell Is Round The Corner - Tricky - Maxinquaye - 1995
28. Glory Box - Portishead - Dummy - 1994
29. Underwater Love - Smoke City - Flying Away - 1997
30. Outro Lado - ZUCO 103 - Outro Lado - 2000
31. Open Your Eyes - Alice w/ Skye Edwards of Morcheeba - Exit - 2000
32. Fear and Love - Morcheeba - Big Calm - 1998
33. The Air I Breathe - Badmarsh & Shri - Dancing Drums - 1999
34. Jaan - Talvin Singh feat. Amar - Anokha Soundz of the Asian Underground - 1997
35. Dissolved Girl - Massive Attack - Mezzanine - 1998
36. Everything Changes - Kapta - Voices of Drum & Bass, Vol. 1 - 1997
37. Floater f/ Joy Malcolm - Waldeck - The Night Garden - 2001
38. Post-Human Sophistry - DJ Spooky - Riddim Warfare - 1998
39. Little Things - Lamb - Fear of Fours - 1999
40. Distractions - Zero 7 - Simple Things - 2001