The Bristol sound and trip-hop's golden age

Year zero. Released April 1991, Blue Lines is the record that turned the Wild Bunch sound system into a band and trip-hop into a genre, slow, dubwise, sampled, with Shara Nelson, Tricky and reggae veteran Horace Andy trading the mic. "Unfinished Sympathy" alone reorganised what British dance music could feel like: orchestral, heartbroken, built for headphones rather than the floor. Everything here flows from it.

The genre's most beautiful record and its Mercury Prize winner (1995). Geoff Barrow built the beats from his own homemade samples and crackling vinyl; Beth Gibbons sang like a torch singer in a collapsing film noir; Adrian Utley played guitar like a Morricone score left out in the rain. Dummy (1994) is where trip-hop stopped being hip-hop's slow cousin and became its own grieving, cinematic thing.

The strange one, and to many the best. A former Massive Attack collaborator, Tricky made his 1995 debut a claustrophobic duet with the teenage Martina Topley-Bird, his whispered rasp and her clear voice tangled over warped, smoke-damaged production. Named for his late mother, Maxine Quaye, it's the album where the Bristol sound got genuinely uneasy, paranoid, blurred, sexual, and unlike anything before or since.

The 1994 second album, and the one that proved Blue Lines wasn't a fluke. Produced with Nellee Hooper, it's warmer and more soul-forward, Tracey Thorn of Everything but the Girl singing the title track, Horace Andy returning, Tricky's last full involvement before he left. Quieter than its bookends in the catalogue, but the run from "Protection" to "Karmacoma" is the band at their most effortless.

The masterpiece, and the one that nearly broke the band making it. Mezzanine (1998) ditched the soul warmth for post-punk dread, guitars, industrial textures, Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins haunting "Teardrop." Darker, harder and more paranoid than anything in the genre, it's the rare trip-hop record that sounds heavier with age. The sessions were so acrimonious they cost the band a founding member.

If Maxinquaye seduced, this one snarls. Recorded fast and hot in Jamaica, Pre-Millennium Tension (1996) is Tricky at his most abrasive and least commercial, claustrophobic, dub-scarred, genuinely unsettling. The label wanted another Maxinquaye; he handed them a nervous breakdown set to a riddim. It's aged into one of the decade's most uncompromising records.

The self-titled second album (1997) is colder and more ravaged than Dummy, same noir DNA, but the strings are sourer and Gibbons sounds closer to the edge. Recorded partly to a film score Barrow composed and then sampled, it refuses the easy prettiness of the debut. The crowd that wanted "Dummy 2" was disappointed; the crowd that wanted the band to go deeper got their wish.

Eleven years of silence, then this. Third (2008) abandoned trip-hop entirely for krautrock motorik, ukulele drone and the abyss, "Machine Gun" is built from a single brutal drum-machine pattern. Included here as the genre's coda: the band who perfected the Bristol sound proving they'd rather burn it down than repeat it. One of the great long-delayed comebacks in any genre.

The missing link, and the source code. Rob Smith and Ray Mighty produced Massive Attack's first single and ran the sound-system culture the whole scene grew from. Recorded around 1989 but not released until 1995, Bass Is Maternal splits the difference between dub, proto-jungle and trip-hop, the Bristol sound's foundations laid bare. Essential for anyone who wants to hear where the city's bass weight actually came from.

The instrumental wing's holy text. Built entirely from samples by a Californian crate-digger for James Lavelle's Mo' Wax label, Endtroducing..... (1996) once held a Guinness record as the first album made purely from sampled material. It's trip-hop reimagined as archaeology, dusty soul, forgotten film dialogue and breakbeats assembled into something melancholy and vast. Not Bristol, but unthinkable without it.

Trip-hop's great Tokyo export. Hideaki Ishi turned the Mo' Wax sound inward (sparse, meditative, deeply rhythmic) and on Meiso (1995) pulled in Mos Def, Guru and DJ Shadow himself. It's the proof that the Bristol mood travelled: an East-meets-West instrumental hip-hop record that stands with anything the genre's home city produced. A cornerstone of the abstract beats lineage.

James Lavelle's Mo' Wax supergroup, co-produced by DJ Shadow and stacked with guests, Thom Yorke on "Rabbit in Your Headlights," Richard Ashcroft, Mike D. Psyence Fiction (1998) is overblown, expensive and divisive, the sound of the instrumental scene reaching for stadium scale. Flawed and fascinating: the moment trip-hop tried to become event music.

Warp Records' warmest record. George Evelyn traded the Leeds bleep-techno of his early singles for something blissed-out and horizontal, dub-soaked, sample-rich, the platonic ideal of the word "chilled" before that word became an insult. Smokers Delight (1995) is the down-tempo end of the spectrum done with genuine soul rather than spa-music blandness.

The pop end, done right. Becoming X (1996) paired skittering trip-hop production with Kelli Dayton's cool, knowing vocals, "6 Underground" became one of the genre's few genuine crossover hits. The band fired their singer afterward and never recaptured it, which only makes this debut feel more like a perfect accident. A gateway record that holds up far better than its one-hit reputation suggests.

The sound at its most welcoming. Skye Edwards' honeyed voice over the Godfrey brothers' loping, blues-and-soul-soaked grooves, Big Calm (1998) is the album that made trip-hop a dinner-party staple, for better and worse. Strip away the smoothness and the songwriting is genuinely strong; "The Sea" and "Part of the Process" are small classics of the gentler wing.

Manchester's contribution, and the most restless. Lamb's 1996 debut fused trip-hop's atmosphere with drum-and-bass nervous energy and Lou Rhodes' jazz-trained voice, "Cotton Wool" and "Górecki" pulling in opposite directions, fragile and frantic at once. Proof the genre could be jittery and emotional rather than merely narcotic.

Belgium's entry, and one of the genre's most cinematic. Originally a trip-hop outfit before drifting toward orchestral pop, Hooverphonic's 1996 debut is lush, widescreen and sample-savvy, "2Wicky" loops Isaac Hayes into something gorgeous. A reminder that the Bristol mood spread across Europe and mutated everywhere it landed.

The graceful late entry, and where the golden age politely ends. Simple Things (2001) is downtempo at its most refined, introducing a then-unknown Sia on vocals and channelling Steely Dan's studio sheen into something warm and Sunday-morning soft. By now the abrasive edge of early trip-hop was gone, replaced by craft and comfort. A beautiful record, and the sound of a genre settling into respectability.