If you, like me, run to Sirius XM to listen to chill hop or study beats, or if you’re one of the millions of people who tune into Lofi Girl on YouTube while working or studying, you very well could have trip hop to thank for that. My scholars also have the privilege of listening to it during their 65 minutes each day with me, and we all know learning is better and knowledge can grow deeper with some great tunes in the background. I mean, music really is like water for the brain. If it weren’t for acts like Massive Attack, Tricky, or my personal favorite trip hop band, Portishead, those modern stations simply wouldn’t exist.

Here in the United States, trip hop never quite dominated the mainstream scene the way it probably should have. Portishead seemed to have the biggest impact on the domestic charts, peaking at No. 53 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the absolute classic “Sour Times (Nobody Loves Me)” in 1995. The following year brought the Sneaker Pimps’ “6 Underground,” which was my personal introduction to the genre. That incredible song came off an even more incredible album, Becoming X. That record still remains in my top 10 albums of all time, and on any given week, it could easily land in my top 5.

Trip hop was really my gateway into electronic music as a whole. By the time Madonna’s classic Ray of Light was released, I was already deeply familiar with electronic production and the sounds of the UK, courtesy of my local Tower Records and Q magazine. For me, the standard American radio scene of the 90s and Y2K just wasn’t doing it. I had to look across the pond for my music or pay those steep import prices, and I vividly remember dropping $35 or more on import CDs. Ah, the price of being a young gay guy with exceptionally fine taste in music!

This brings me to a playlist I recently created: SBMx 001 | 1999 | Trip Hop. (Links Below)

While I was writing my last newsletter all about the year 1999, I was actually listening to the Sneaker Pimps and Portishead, which got me thinking… what trip hop was actually released in 1999? So, here it is: a curated collection of some of my personal favorite tunes from that genre, released in the final year of the “1900s,” as my kids love to call it.

Before I go, I have to tell you a quick story about one specific track you’ll hear on the playlist: “Moonchild” by Cibo Matto.

Before I go, I have to tell you a quick story about one specific track you’ll hear on the playlist: “Moonchild” by Cibo Matto.

Now, the band, consisting of Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori, who you might also know as the voice of Noodle from Gorillaz, aren’t strictly trip hop artists, but they are a band that I absolutely LOVE. Their debut album Viva La Woman was released in 1996. If you want another great trip-hop-adjacent song by them, check out “Sugar Water” or my personal favorite, “Theme,” which actually shares a sample with The Cure’s “Pictures of You” remix from Mixed Up… oh boy, I’m getting incredibly off-topic, apologies!

Anyway, Viva La Woman was one of my favorite albums during my junior and senior years of high school. They weren’t massively popular, so finding information about them during those pre-internet dark ages, and shoot, even those early years of the web were pretty bare, was tough. The internet wasn’t filled with everything yet. But somehow I found out, though I wish I could remember how, that they had released a second album, Stereotype A, in 1999.

I was living in downtown Phoenix during those years, and I could not find that album anywhere. Trust me, I searched high and low. It probably wasn’t until the year 2000 or 2001, while I was up in the college mountain town of Flagstaff, that I popped into a little record store and there it was! Oh, I could not wait to slide that disc into my car’s stereo. It was a very different album from their debut, and I don’t know if I was into it straight away, even with an Obi-Wan Kenobi reference, and you know I’m a massive Star Wars fan, but the track “Moonchild” is just so beautiful. The very soul of that song is born out of trip hop, and I’m excited for you to hear it.

I hope you enjoy this week’s playlist! Let me know if you are a fellow fan of trip hop. Was there a specific song on the mixtape that really grabbed you? Hit reply and share your love of the genre with me, or drop some of your own favorite tracks. I always love finding new gems!

TTYL,

Bryan Barry

💀 SBMx | Spotify

💀 SBMx 001 | Apple

There wasn’t any social media in the ‘90s, so the term “doomscrolling” didn’t exist. However, that didn’t stop anyone from obsessing over checking their pager. We all knew where the nearest payphone was. That was unless you were a bougie business person—then you were probably carrying a Nokia by now. It’d be a few more years before they were in the majority of pockets.

Gaming was as big as ever, and one of its giants was about to fall because it may have just been a bit too innovative for people. Sega released the Dreamcast this year with one of the greatest marketing strategies ever: 9.9.99. It was the first home console ever to ship with a built-in 56k modem, allowing it to connect to the web. Can you imagine not connecting to the web now? Well, back then there weren’t enough yeses to make it work, and this console eventually killed Sega’s ambition to stay in the hardware market. I would like to say that I was one of those folks who did buy a Dreamcast—and while it wasn’t out until 2000, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is still the GOAT!

However, as great as all of this was… there was definitely anxiety in the air over what was to come in this new millennium.

What Were Some of the Fears?

It was hard to get away from the conversation about the world ending at midnight. Many were fearful that computers wouldn’t know what to do or that they might think it was “year zero,” causing a complete collapse in software. People worried the world would be left vulnerable to attack, planes would fall from the sky, or all the money in their bank accounts would essentially disappear.

I know this might sound a little out there with today’s understanding, but those fears were real. And if you just read that thinking it was outlandish, you have no idea what some others were fearful of! There were people out there who thought we were just a bit of food for the machine and we just didn’t know it yet. If you were one of those people—I’m not saying this was me... I mean maybe it could have been, but I wouldn’t admit to it—and by “those people,”I mean the ones who saw The Matrix way too many times and were convinced that by midnight the machines would come out, and there would be no Neo choosing to take the red pill, awakening to the “real world,” and rising to the hero’s call to save us all.

What Were We Looking Forward To?

While many were nervous about what the dawn would bring, plenty were optimistic for the new millennium and the technological innovation it promised. There was a promise of instant knowledge: ask the internet a question, and the answer would come back in a flash! While that hope would almost come true, we, in our innocence, didn’t expect the answers to come with far too much regularity built on bias, manipulation, and intentional rage bait. I can still remember in college all of our books being scanned into the database on our campus in the hopes that we could easily read a digital book. Now, those books have been fed into AI, and that human element seems to be long forgotten.

Massive publications like Popular Science promised an era of free online ordering and free, long-distance video calls (remember when long-distance was a concern?). The future promised a technological democratization. Maybe we all believed these things would be easily accessed, but the Covid-19 shutdown showed this country just how many families didn’t have the resources to provide reliable internet to their children, and a new reading crisis was born.

I wish this future would come, and maybe we will still see a more open-source and egalitarian future after the AI bubble bursts. I am still hopeful that when we are face-to-face with the machine doing all of the work, we, as a society, will find value in humanity once more. Alas, for now, that future exists only in the minds of optimists.

Hey, at least these days my Xbox is safely plugged into The Matrix—I mean, the internet—so regardless of whether I take the blue pill or the red pill, I’m having a good time. Plus, I have enough Ramen noodles and Twinkies hoarded away in my pantry to survive the Rise of the Machines (yes, I’m aware that I am pulling that reference from another movie… that’s just the kind of guy that I am).

So, what about you? What do you have hoarded away in case the machines come to drain you like a Duracell battery?

TTYL… Bryan

nos•tal•gic ar•chea•ol•o•gy

Noun

1. The act of excavating, documenting, and preserving the cultural artifacts, media, and physical relics of the 1980s, 1990s, and the Y2K era.

2. The exploration of how our analog past continues to shape our digital future

   

   I’m Bryan Barry, a Xennial creative exploring our analog past versus our digital future… honestly, I don’t know which is better. Now that I’ve said that, does one even have to be better than the other? Can two things exist at once? I think this project is going to help me out just as much as it does you!

   I’m of the right age to remember a time when the future of technology felt purely exciting. Today, we live in a world where it’s hard to tell if you’re connecting with a real person or an AI bot.

   While I’m not anti-tech—I’m actually incredibly excited by it—I do believe there is a lot to discuss about how we move forward in this ever-evolving digital world. I believe there is a lot to borrow from the last of our analog days. We are in a time of change, and we must actively decide what our future looks like for human connection and human creativity. I look forward to those discussions with you!

   That’s why this project exists. One of the greatest gifts of those retro eras was the love of connecting for the sheer sake of it. We weren’t trying to build a “side hustle,” and we weren’t obsessed with creating “content.” We were just sharing ideas… and, maybe even learning about something we had never heard of!

   To keep that spirit alive, this project is not monetized, and there are no plans to ever monetize it.

   Whether you grew up during these decades or are just fascinated by them, I want to hear from you. What pieces of our analog past should we take with us into our ever-evolving digital future, and what do we need to leave behind?

   

   I can’t wait to read your stories and connect.

   KIT,

   Bryan Barry from Skullboi

🎧 Listen on Spotify