In Reverence: The Trip

Read Time: 4 mins

A long time ago, in a galaxy far less apocalyptic than this one. In a time of Dionysian revelry and joy (for me at least). Long before Married at First Sight, First Dates, Celebrity SOS, or any of that other vapid, civilisation-eroding nonsense. 4Later/Channel 4 (UK) aired an eight-part programme on the tellybox that genuinely blew my tiny, impressionable mind — burrowing deep into my hippocampus like a vole. And there it stayed, stuck in a loop for the best part of 27 years.

That programme was called The Trip.

The Trip was an eight-part series constructed from rarely seen NASA footage, spanning the advent of space exploration right up to the present day (1999, in this case). Best of all, it aired deep in the night — 2:50 am, to be exact. As the clubs generally closed at 2, in ’90s Britain, The Trip was either post-club viewing, or pre-rave/squat-party viewing for the faithful.

_ Antigravity fun

It was the brainchild of investigative journalist Jacques Peretti, with music curated and mixed by DJ Downfall — an alias of John Stanley — who also played drums in Marine Research and appeared in various guises as John Dweeb in Denim-esque plastic-pop practitioners Dweeb.

From its opening countdown to its fast-cut, time-reversal ending, these eight episodes wove a strange narrative of humanity and its relationship with the cosmos — somewhere between reality and non-reality. Sometimes ominous, sometimes heroic, the cut-up nature of the footage and its integration with the soundtrack seemed to bend reality and time.

This wasn’t just a DJ mix with cool visuals. The Trip defied linearity. Contrary to the conventions of the time, there was no interest in sticking to a BPM or a genre per se, instead opting for a vibe or an emotion linked to the on-screen action.

The Trip traded in conflicting ideas around space travel, capitalism, colonisation, militarism and American Imperialism — at least that was my take. Looking back, it has become a perfect illustration of a time in electronic music when inventiveness, playfulness, and altered states were key, and studio and sample limitations bore strange fruit.

Musically, it was a who’s who of electronic music innovation: Plastikman, Third Eye Foundation, Boards of Canada, Caustic Window, and Mogwai all featured. They even released a mix CD via the now-defunct Oxford label Shifty Disco. Mine’s in a basement somewhere down the road…

_ The Trip OST: I'll have to dig mine out

In the world of The Trip, tracks would often start and stop. Spoken fragments from NASA footage would stitch the narrative together, before things dissolved into gurn-inducing visual and audio compositions — spinning satellites glistening to the sound of Sabres of Paradise’s Chapel Market at 9 am spring to mind. Other times it was the sinister digidub of Plastikman’s Locomotion, cut to images of ’60s–’70s NASA space-colonisation idents and infinity loops, or even the out-and-out audio war of Bomb 20’s Made of Shit.

The Trip was Koyaanisqatsi for the rave generation, and I doubt anything like it will ever grace terrestrial television again. Having spent a bit of time this week rewatching the eight episodes in their entirety, I’m beginning to feel that, in some way, everything I’ve ever done — whether radio, labels, or this blog — is somehow indebted to this masterpiece of late-night telly.

_ Gorgeous NASA idents

I should have titled this The Trip [series one], as during my YouTube investigations, I discovered a series two that is slightly broader musically and darker but equally brilliant. You can find that here. However, that series was broadcast in 2001, and I no longer had a telly. I haven’t been able to find any embeddable videos of series one, and my own uploads have been roundly rejected. Series one is still available on Channel 4 and there are some episodes which haven’t been taken down here.

Now, I’m well aware that my readership here are, like me, mostly serotonin-deprived British chubby-dad types with too much time on their hands, who most likely watched The Trip back in the day. And if that’s you, I hope this little trip down memory lane released some much-needed dopamine. But on the off-chance that you are younger, not British, or simply missed it the first time round, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. And finally, here’s a video I made a long time ago for Aural Imbalance, which was inspired by The Trip

Happy Tripping x