This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Quick: Name all the great American trip-hop bands. OK, then, name one. Still stumped? No wonder — there aren’t any. Or at least there weren’t any until drone-rockers Bowery Electric.
The Brooklyn duo of vocalist Martha Schwendener and instrumentalist Lawrence Chandler — a protégé of minimalist LaMonte Young — prove once and for all with their fourth album Lushlife that the Yanks can chill and thrill with the best of their Brit counterparts. On these 10 seductive tracks, dark siren-song vocals and decadent synth squiggles join shock-wave bass slabs and nodding beatbox backbeats in morphine-drip hip-hop grooves less suited to a Big Apple bar than a late-night Bristol backroom — or any place where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life.
