My Favorite Band

Review: Sweet Trip

By Oda Ajaba

Today I want to briefly cover the story of my favorite band of all time, Sweet Trip.

The band was a legendary California-based Electronica and Rock duo consisting of Valerie Cooper and Roby Burgos. Getting their start in the 90’s their first album and an EP a year later, Halica Bliss Out V.11 (1998), and Alura (1999), found a niche interest among the so-cal indie scene. Already making a name for themselves they would follow this up with their legendary classics Velocity: Design: Comfort, and You Will Never Know Why.

Sweet Trip made art in many different genres and each of their albums sound very different from each other. Halica V11 and Alura pushed IDM onto the indie scene, going on to inspire many artists in the sphere of electronic music. IDM stands for Intelligent Dance Music, a subgenre of EDM that takes more artistic liberties with the genre and moves away from the more conventional. Sweet Trip built upon this foundation and would combine aspects of IDM with shoegaze.

Shoegaze is another subgenre, this time being derived from rock. It gets its name for rock bands who spend so much time gazing at their shoes so they can hit the effect pedals often. Shoegaze is a more atmospheric version of alt/indie rock, still keeping the emotional lyrics of alternative music and combining it with overlaid effects, and powerful guitars, the goal being able to create a “wall of sound.”

Another genre Sweet Trip covers is known as Dream Pop. It's similar to shoegaze in which it heavily features effects to create atmosphere, except the overall instrumentation is toned down a little bit in order to bring more focus to the lyrics. Like the name alludes to its more a subgenre of pop than rock. Velocity: Design: Comfort, or just VDC for short, built upon their start in IDM and combined

that Shoegaze Sweet Trip’s wall of sound is renowned for having dream-like soundscapes that combine with their raw emotional lyrics to create a dreamy yet moody vibe that underscores almost every genre they touch.

Their next album, You Will Never Know Why was a slight departure in sound from prior

releases. You Will Never Know Why takes more after dream pop than shoegaze but still retains all of the marks of Sweet Trip’s music. This time the guitars and effects are turned down in order to let the emotional lyrics shine through.

After this frankly generational run of albums Sweet Trip would go on hiatus following the

release of You Will Never Know Why in 2009. During this hiatus their discography would be

discovered by the wider internet, partially thanks to the imageboard 4Chan. Sweet Trip blew up on the site’s music board /mu/ and would become well known among the indie scene. Sweet Trip subsequently gained a cult following on the internet with the albums Velocity: Design: Comfort and You Will Never Know Why being a fan-favorite.

The duo would take note of this during their hiatus and would come back in 2018 with the

announcement of a new album. Their final album A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar

Equals, would release in 2021. Sonically this album was a combination of everything that came

before.

Blending Shoegaze, Dream Pop, and IDM seamlessly to make a very vulnerable and

emotional project. It's personally my favorite album of their whole discography, but it's a very

controversial album because it directly led to the band’s breakup shortly after ending their long hiatus. Shortly after the album was released, Valerie Cooper would announce that she was leaving the band for personal reasons.

For context the album sees the duo performing various romance songs, one of them being the song Eave Foolery Mill Five. The title was originally thought to be gibberish until internet

sleuths would uncover that the title was an anagram for Valerie Love of My Life. Not only is this extremely creepy, but it crosses a line because Valerie was married and had been for years.

While the internet was figuring out the hidden meaning behind the song and the album as a whole, Valerie’s husband Daniel Cooper would announce to the internet that the reason behind the breakup was due to Roby Burgos committing sexual assault on his bandmate, directly being the reason behind the band splitting

Sweet Trip had a very tragic end that left a lot of people hurt for various different reasons.

Because of one man’s actions there was real harm done to Valerie and fans of the band lost a

legendary duo that just returned after a decade of hiatus. Sweet Trip, although very highly

regarded, is still pretty unknown in the grand scheme of music. They’re my favorite band of all

time and it's important to me that people know their story. Check out some of their music

sometime if you’re ever looking for new things to listen to.