The Herbaliser – Bring Out the Sound

After a five year hiatus (and almost twenty-one years to the day since releasing their hallmark trip-hop album Blow Your Headphones), The Herbaliser have returned to the limelight with their newest addition to UK hip-hop, Bring Out the Sound.

The opening track Breach sums the album up best, presenting cinematic samples as a distant echo before launching into the pair’s signature fanfare of jazz, scratching, and rap samples. The Herbaliser are back and they've brought all the familiar ingredients, with some added volume to boot.

Once famous for bridging the gap between classic American hip-hop and 90s Britain’s more instrumental sound, The Herbaliser perform a kind of acrobatics as they move through the record. Seize the Day is their first foray into a lighter more acoustic sound, resonant of artists like Air featuring mournful lyrics from Just Jack sung over strings. Like Shaft, by contrast, features the seminal MC Rodney P spitting rap over a deep and rumbling bass. The full range of hip-hop is on display here, showing the many ways that it can be turned and twisted.

True to their own history, and to trip-hop’s habit of osmosing different genres, Bring Out the Sound conjures many moods, at times loud and emphatic and at others cool and unassuming. It sits neatly, as is The Herbaliser’s want, between funk and psychedelia, warranting multiple listens to pick out all the textures woven together.

Listen to: Out There, Some Things