Sweet Trip

San Francisco-based group Sweet Trip gleefully incorporated a wide range of styles into their futuristic blend of indie pop and electronic music. First appearing near the end of the 1990s with a lush, spacious mixture of dream pop, ambient, techno, and drum'n'bass, they fused wide-eyed pop songwriting with glitch-heavy experimentation on the 2003 opus Velocity : Design : Comfort. Easing up on the frenetic electronic effects, they released the more streamlined but still vibrant You Will Never Know Why in 2009. The band unexpectedly became popular online near the end of the 2010s, and they returned in 2021 with their fourth album, A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals. 2022's Seen/Unseen gathered rarities from throughout the band's career. Sweet Trip was founded during the 1990s by producer and songwriter Roberto Burgos along with singer, guitarist, and synth player Valerie Cooper and bassist/drummer Viet Le. In 1997, the group played a show opening for ambient jungle producer Junior Varsity KM, who was readying his first releases for Darla Records. After impressing the label with their entrancing brand of heavy electronic shoegaze, Sweet Trip handed in a demo tape, and debut album Halica was released in 1998 as part of the label's Bliss Out series. An EP focusing on remixes of the track Fish also appeared, and Sweet Trip became staples of the label's Little Darla Has a Treat for You and Drum & Bliss compilation series. They also remixed songs by artists such as Takako Minekawa and Club 8. Alura, Sweet Trip's more dance-oriented second EP, appeared in 1999. The band shifted their lineup a bit (bassist Aaron Porter had joined in 1998, Le left in 2000, and drummer Rob Uytingco came aboard in 2000), and they released the dense, sprawling Velocity : Design : Comfort in 2003. After a prolonged absence, the group returned with You Will Never Know Why, their most direct collection of indie pop songs yet, in 2009. Down to just Burgos and Cooper, Sweet Trip occasionally posted songs and experiments throughout the 2010s, with Burgos also working under the solo moniker .blacktunic. Gradually, the music world started to catch up with Sweet Trip's hyper-modern pop sensibilities, and their work developed a major cult following, especially Velocity : Design : Comfort. The album was given a long-awaited vinyl issue in 2020, and the artwork for Little Darla Has a Treat for You, Vol. 30 featured the bandmembers covered in copies of the reissue. The compilation also included a freshly recorded Sweet Trip song ("In Sound, We Found Each Other"), as well as their remix of Rocketship's "I Don't Know Why I Still Love You." You Will Never Know Why was remastered and reissued in early 2021, and the band released a single titled Walkers Beware! We Drive Into the Sun in advance of their fourth full-length. A Tiny House, in Secret Speeches, Polar Equals arrived in May, encompassing all previous elements of the group's sound, from glitchy experimentation to airy psychedelia. An expanded reissue of Halica appeared in 2022, along with Seen/Unseen, a 50-track digital compilation of mostly unheard songs, demos, and a Beach Boys cover (a shortened double-LP edition was scheduled for release later in the year). The release of Seen/Unseen was accompanied by the announcement that Sweet Trip had broken up in January.
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