Sometimes it’s easy to forget trip-hop is still a viable genre in 2013. Like grunge or post-rock before it, trip-hop seemed like it had a expiration date wired into its very aesthetic — a flash-in-the-pan phenomena that fizzled out as soon as it erupted. Watch any gritty ’90s to early 2000s action flick (preferably the scuzzier sci-fi ones) and you’re bound to hear at least one or two Portishead or Tricky cuts, pounding away to a rainy backdrop or to a dimly lit but pulsating club. As time went on, though, the scene went the way of all my toy dinosaurs; tucked away at the back of a drawer, presumably and unfortunately never to be seen again.
Maybe, then, Portland’s Douglas Appling’s return to Madison is indicative of some sort of long heralded resurgence in the genre. Backed live by violinist Ilya Goldberg, Appling’s Emancipator project is a lush expansion of the sounds pioneered by his forerunners. Less Massive Attack than Mum, his music is like a rave thrown in a wooded glen; the drugged-up midnight clatter is supplemented by Dirty Three violins, gentle keys, haunting, chopped-and-screwed vocals, and warped acoustic trills. Appling’s songs manage a sort of solemn and hypnotic monotony, halfway between Burial and Bassnecter. Danceable but dropless; EDM for the rest of us.
Emancipator’s latest tour is a downtempo jubilee in celebration of his first LP since 2010’s slow-burning Safe in the Steep Cliffs. His upcoming third album, Dusk to Dawn, promises more of the same if first single “Minor Cause” is anything to go by, but that’s hardly a complaint. As an artist that dabbles in the ethos and the atmosphere as opposed to the specific or the idiosyncratic, Emancipator excels.
Skittery glitch-hop producer Mux Mool and Emancipator’s own eclectic labelmate Tor are set to open the set, bringing their particular swaths of energy to the Majestic. Mux Mool is taking a victory lap for his excellent 2010 release Planet High School and Tor is promoting his 2012 hodgepodge and cerebral debut, Drum Therapy.