Albums of Downtempo music

In the 1990s, musical culture spawned countless variety of musical forms and directions. However, their roots are deepened in almost the same sources. Take, for example, downtempo music and hardcore – two completely dissimilar styles: one is chilling and easy; the other one is very high-spirited and somewhat hard to understand. If the first one was born in the warm sunrays of Ibiza, the second one took its strength from the northern seas of England. Despite the fact that our online store provides the possibility to buy or download compositions of both styles, the present article focuses on peculiarities of downtempo music.

History of emergence and development

As you may know, in the early 1990s, Ibiza clubs were obliged to cover roofs, that’s why the clubbers have started fashion for a chill out areas providing possibility to relax listening to tracks of the best downtempo artists, take a breath, buy some drink, and the main thing – to pass the time while waiting for the dawn on this beautiful island. As a rule, there were open terraces, and the music played there by downtempo bands was calm, quiet, with a down tempo, hence the name of the genre. In their company, clubbers began to call this style downtempo. The genre of downbeat is similar in style: it is represented by rather slow ambient-like compositions, but with its individuality, most often ‘broken’ beat. You can hear this feature, if you download songs in lossless quality. Our site provides compositions in both mp3 and flac formats.

The reason of high rating of downtempo downloads is its broken sound, which is achieved due to the displacement of strong part of the bar by the weak one (the so-called syncopation) or simply by mixing several different rhythmic patterns. To appreciate this sound, real admirers of the genre buy tracks in lossless flac format. In addition, the overall tone is complemented by numerous loops that can last up to two minutes in a row.

Having brought a new sound to the UK, the musicians began to modify it to their needs and increased the purchases. In Bristol, there appeared the first trip-hop teams, which combined elements of hip-hop, drum and bass and downtempo in their variants of downtempo mp3s. In the wake of the universal immersion in the depression and the revival of punk, music acquired ‘dark’ color. At this time, there appeared the best downtempo artists such as Massive Attack and Portishead. By the way, thanks to the debut album of Massive Attack “Blue Lines” trip-hop went out of the shadows and became a mainstream trend. It is still believed to be one of the best downtempo albums. High interest in this musical style is also proved by the appearance of a great number of specific books (for example, “Chillout and Downtempo Electronic Music, a History” by John Dalling).

Prominent representatives

The rising tide of popularity of the genre was stipulated by the creativity of the best groups:

Morcheeba;
Tricky;
Gorillaz.

Their albums are believed to be the best of the genre. Such a popularity of the style caused emergence of various sub-genres (for example, downtempo jazz).

In the 1990s, the stage was already captured by future music icons:

Moby;
Morcheeba;
Unkle;
Hooverphonic;
Röyksopp;
Télépopmusik;
Parov Stelar;
Filla Brazilla and many others.

The best downtempo songs are the following:

‘Converting Vegetarian’ by Infected Mushroom;
‘Sleep Alone’ by Moby;
‘Prophetic Sines’ by Bluetech.

You can purchase all these tracks with the help of our site. Be they created either at professional studios or recorded by independent musicians, we provide them in lossless quality ensured by flac and mp3 formats of tracks.