Attica Blues

The debut album from Attica Blues came out on trip hop label Mo Wax in 1997 and is a quietly unassuming, high-class UK hip hop-soul-down-tempo-beatology-hybrid. Their presence on Mo Wax and their sliced and diced break beats qualify this album as trip hop, but Attica Blues clearly had higher aims than simply chopping up some old funk drums and adding abstract soundscaping on top. This is an album of stark and stately soul, jazz, instrumental hip hop and turntablism, a set of tracks with a seriousness to them. Attica Blues was a transitional release, something of a musical bridge between hip hop, trip hop, soul and the emerging club sound of broken beat and remains a confident, bold, uncompromising and undervalued album in UK Black British music history.