Whether you're reading, cooking, or just laying back and chilling out, put this on and let it ride. Here's a mix of downtempo indie rock, jazzy electronic, and outré hip-hop that holds the vibe without rocking the boat. I frequently check The Lounge too, and while it's a bit more mixed, it often covers a lot of downtempo music. Sharpen your senses with this mix of introspective electronic soundscapes. In case you're Apple Music playlist, I absolutely love their Pure Focus. Last, but not least - our friends from S!X Music and their downtempo / trip-hop selection. For those of you who are on the journey to achieving pure zen, then my go-to playlist is Liquid Beats' Downtempo Chill, a selection that's quite frequently refreshed with some of the most relaxing chilled out sounds out there.
If you're looking for something more mystic and deep house-influenced, stop by Joanna Hengstebeck's Downtempo Deep Electronica. Still, the feeling of slow-paced chill is definitely pervasive.įor Spotify users, I would recommend their Downtempo Beats editorial and while it hasn't been updated in a while, I love the selection on it. Just like the genre is prone to rather expansive "reading", when looking for downtempo playlists you might find very different sounds. Yes, that's lots more than just downtempo, but I bet you'll love it. freshness?įinally, the time for selfish self-promotion ad I'll start with our Ambient Space selection, which I carefully curate. If you’re into downtempo, chill out, instrumental hip hop, trip hop, or anything in between, I've made a list of my top 10 favourite artists downtempo nowadays, regardless of their.
My love for Bonobo sparkled looking into Massive Attack, Zero 7, Boards of Canada and RJD2. While I have you, Lu wrote an awesome guide of all of his albums ranked, in case you feel like reading something much better written than this piece. That being said, I credit Bonobo's Days To Come as my personal reason, and the first time I heard about this genre. I got into downtempo music much later in my life, but even in my post-hardcore period in the early 2000s, I was already enjoying the music of the DC electronic duo. I think one can not talk about downtempo and leave Thievery Corporation out of the discussion. I believe that's the time when the term electronica was born and it basically served the purpose of combining all of those similarly vibed genres. That's around the time when the popularity of downtempo, chillout, and ambient electronic music truly gained popularity amongst the masses. With the rise of the Ibiza rave culture mid to late '90s, DJs had brought this popularity by playing such music towards the end of their sets, just like I mentioned a few paragraphs up in this article. Genre's origins are intertwined with the wave of slow-paced electronic music that has gained popularity in the late '80s and early '90s. Not that it's a must, but a lot of artists find inspiration in the Asian and Middle-Eastern cultures. I often find that downtempo music has this scent of mysticism around it. Its slowness and melody-heavy build-ups make it the perfect end of a set in case you're playing in the early hours of the day as the sun is slowly making its way up. People often use trip-hop as a synonym, but I feel there are 2 schools of thought.ĭowntempo is the kind of music you could play both as a background soundtrack to whatever chill thing you do at home, but also as warm-up music before a live show or in the early hours in a bar. The way I understand downtempo music, is basically a more beat-driven and focused ambient music with a slow-paced beat and BPM in the 90 - 110 range. So much, that most of the distributors and major players in the field like Spotify and Apple Music have their own category with that name. While there are hundreds of obscure genres (Black MIDI, I am looking at you), downtempo music is fairly out there.
Hence, I thought of digging around and read what other people on the internet say. We throw the term downtempo quite a lot around here, but in every discussion that involves more than 2 people on the team, I've realized that it is quite difficult to align on what exactly the genre entails.