Trip Hop Beyond the Obvious
Kevin Alexander, the music writer behind the Substack newsletter that pairs him with collaborator Sam Colt for recurring genre deep dives, has turned his attention to trip hop -- a genre whose boundaries were always more suggestion than rule. The piece covers six albums total: three of Alexander's picks and three from Colt, with Alexander providing commentary on all six. The selections span from Sneaker Pimps' mid-nineties pop-inflected debut to Thievery Corporation's politically charged 2008 release, and the range itself says something about how elastic the genre remains.
Alexander opens with a useful framing device borrowed from sports media:
"One of the best lines of advice I ever heard about what makes a good podcast, newsletter, whatever is that it'll 'treat your audience like it's already almost the end of the first quarter.'"
The idea is to assume fluency without assuming expertise. It is a smart editorial posture for a piece like this, and Alexander mostly delivers on it. He never condescends, but he also never disappears so far into the weeds that a casual listener would lose the thread.
The Accessible Entry Point
Alexander's first pick, Sneaker Pimps' Becoming X, serves as the on-ramp. He positions the band as occupying a sweet spot in the genre's spectrum:
"If you imagine Tricky and Massive Attack on one end and Portishead on the other, Sneaker Pimps are squarely in the middle, leaning far more into the beats and a poppier sound."
The observation lands. Becoming X is indeed one of the more welcoming trip hop records, and Alexander is right to lead with it. His note about singer Kelli Ali being "unceremoniously cut from the band" afterward adds a bittersweet coda -- the subsequent albums never recaptured the chemistry, which is a point Alexander does not belabor but lets sit.
Where the piece could push harder is on why Becoming X qualifies as "underrated" in the first place. The album went platinum in the United States. "6 Underground" was inescapable in 1997. Calling a platinum record underrated requires more justification than Alexander offers here.
The Deep Cut and the Time Capsule
Colt's pick of Bowery Electric's Lushlife draws an evocative two-camp distinction from Alexander:
"Broadly speaking, trip hop generally falls into two camps: the soundtrack to a late-night (or predawn) drive, or the soundtrack to some sort of heist."
That binary is reductive by design, and it works. Alexander places Lushlife firmly in the nocturnal-drive category, noting its "swirls and noir atmosphere" while flagging that the album's consistency could cut both ways. The honest assessment is refreshing.
Alexander's second personal pick, Bomb the Bass's Clear, gets the most vivid writing in the piece. He sets the cultural scene with precision -- the nineties pivot from rave hedonism to literary posturing -- and then zeroes in on Tim Simenon's collaborators. The passage on Sinead O'Connor singing the chorus on "Empire" is particularly sharp:
"If an RFP for this song landed on your desk, you'd chuckle a little before tossing it. It shouldn't work, but man, it sure does."
The business-world metaphor is unexpected in a music review, and that is exactly why it works. Alexander also shows good critical instincts by conceding the album's weak spots rather than glossing over them:
"There are a couple of tracks you can skip if you're sober (take a bow, 'Somewhere'), but with its weight-bearing basslines and spoken word, Clear is a great snapshot of what it looked like to emerge from the club into the cold light of day."
Stretching the Definition
The most interesting editorial choice in the piece is Alexander's inclusion of Thievery Corporation's Radio Retaliation. He is transparent about the stretch:
"When I mentioned records and artists stretching genre definitions, this was the record I had in mind. And while it's objectively true, I also wanted to use that as a load-bearing rationalization for including this record."
That honesty is disarming. Alexander makes a strong case that the album's protest-record DNA and high BPM count refute the common criticism that Rob Garza and Eric Hilton played it safe. He argues they "doubled down on the record they thought made the most sense for when it was recorded," and connects its urgency to the political tensions of 2026. At fifteen tracks, Alexander admits the album could have been trimmed by two or three songs -- a fair point that most fans of the record would concede.
One could argue, though, that including an album the writer himself calls a genre stretch in a list meant to spotlight underrated trip hop somewhat undermines the premise. If the guardrails have to be widened to fit the pick, it might belong in a different list entirely.
The Guest Picks
Alexander's responses to Colt's selections are generous without being uncritical. On Hooverphonic's A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular, he delivers a compact hot take:
"This sounds like a Belgian version of Massive Attack (not derogatory)."
That parenthetical does a lot of work. The comparison is apt -- Hooverphonic's debut does share Massive Attack's cinematic scope and genre-blending ambition -- and Alexander's willingness to admit it was a new discovery for him reinforces the collaborative spirit of the series.
Supreme Beings of Leisure's self-titled debut gets the most colorful treatment, with Alexander pitching it as the soundtrack to a Mad Men dinner party. The image is specific enough to be useful: relaxed, urbane, just enough funk to keep things moving. He singles out Geri Soriano's vocals and the Middle Eastern flourishes on "Strangelove Addiction" as highlights.
Bottom Line
Alexander's piece succeeds as exactly what it promises to be: a guided tour through six trip hop records that most listeners have either overlooked or forgotten. The collaborative format with Colt adds a conversational energy that keeps the piece from reading like a conventional listicle. Alexander writes with the confidence of someone who knows the genre well and the humility of someone still discovering new corners of it.
The strongest writing lands on Clear and Radio Retaliation, where Alexander has the most to argue for and against. The weakest moments come when he gestures at underrated status without fully making the case -- a platinum-selling album and a Thievery Corporation record that topped the Billboard Electronic chart are not exactly buried treasures. But the piece never claims to be an excavation. As Alexander puts it early on:
"Mostly, we just want to help you find a few favorite records (or two)."
On that modest promise, the piece delivers.