downtempo

NOW

EMERGED 1990 · WHAT IT GREW OUT OF AMBIENT, BRISTOL SOUND, HIP HOP · 5 TRACKS TO START WITH, 1 SOURCES

Slow, beat-led electronic music that keeps the textures of ambient but leans on a hip-hop pulse rather than floating free of one. It grew out of the Bristol sound of the UK in the late 1980s, with Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky as the first names. Nightmares on Wax followed in the early 1990s, and acts in other countries took it up through the decade.

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