the.com/downtempo
Electronic music that decided the dance floor could sit down for once.
means A genre of electronic music built on slow, relaxed beats — made for lounging, headphones, and low lighting rather than dancing.
from Straightforward music-industry compounding of 'down' plus 'tempo' — tempo borrowed from Italian, where it simply means 'time,' long used in music to mean the speed of a piece. The term emerged in electronic music culture as a label for beats-oriented tracks slower than house or techno, grouped with trip-hop, chill-out, and ambient grooves in the 1990s.
- origin era
- emerged early 1990s UK trip-hop scene
- bpm range
- typically 70 to 100 beats per minute
- key acts
- Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Bonobo
- common use
- coffee shops, yoga studios, comedowns everywhere