Among the mists of San Francisco in the nineties and the integrated circuits of a digital revolution that was changing the world at supersonic speed, one of the most singular events of the US independent scene developed.
Sweet Trip's is the seemingly impossible synthesis between dream and noise: the dreamlike encounter between the flesh of dream-pop and the cold steel of glitch. The sweet wandering of the melodies is joined by mechanical beats, cacophonous disturbances, memories of a shoegaze admired rather than practiced.
Roberto Burgos and Valerie Cooper built a bridge between the ethereal romanticism of the Cocteau Twins and the electro-mathematical abstractions of the Warp, remaining a name for initiates for years, before the web elevated them to icons of a future that never happened. Precisely that digital revolution that so unpredictably altered the trajectory of their career, which began according to a model much closer to the classic rock group, allowed them to experience a second youth: the information revolution, broadband, web 2.0 and all the technological and cultural upheavals that transformed our lives in the early years of this century made it possible to identify in Sweet Trip a rare hybrid between physical and digital, emotional and icy, melancholic and futuristic. And to say that the problem, initially, was finding a bass player.
From Ophelia Satellite to tepid raving
It all begins in 1993. In a rock scene still stunned by grunge, Roberto Burgos and Viet Le cross paths thanks to a school talent show. Singer Valerie Cooper, a mutual acquaintance, joins in and with Le on drums and Burgos on guitar, Ophelia Satellite is born: guitar-bass-drums-vocals, a classic lineup, but… the bass is missing. The three friends can't find anyone who can complete the training and so they jam sessions There are essentially only drafts left in Le's garage.
Unable to find a bassist capable of connecting with their visions, the three take a forced break. Sometimes, destiny starts with an unobtainable bass player. Burgos adds electronic elements to the musical mix, starting to rethink the very idea of the band in order to get around the lack of a bassist in the lineup. Record some demolabeling the cassettes as “The Sweet Trip”, which was later to become the band's new name with the deletion of the article. They send the demo to some label and Darla responds with interest. The 1998 debut, Halica: Bliss Out v.11is part of a series of ambient-techno releases.
Consisting of seven songs for a total of 55 minutes, it is an atmospheric and eminently electronic album, where however a dreamlike sensitivity filters into the melodies and in which the rhythmic complexity suggests intricate robotic dances. It belongs more to the language of Aphex Twin and Autechre than to that of shoegaze and dream-pop but it is clearly related to them. Just listen to the dreamy “Fish”, 11 minutes that float in a dreamlike state where frenetic mechanical rhythms are submerged by an angelic voice and a layered arrangement. The communication between these different souls is made possible by a psychedelic nuance that blurs the boundaries, making the compositions permeable: as in a tripthe senses are lost between different and often contradictory stimuli, sinking into hypnotic swoons.
A rock soul can be glimpsed against the light in the beat of the drums of “Pulse”. groove ambient-techno grafted with a dream-pop song that takes up another 10 minutes. “Follow Me” is a more refined android ballet, built like a psychedelic crescendo. “Starlife” is a digital memory of dreampop. “Traces” combines hypnotic guitar reflections with distant voices and a tribal dance rhythm. A vocal melody reverberates in the final “Jelly Charm”, eight and a half minutes that combine dream-pop, ambient-techno and psychedelia aiming for hypnosis of the listener. Halica: Bliss Out v.11 it's a tepid rambling, a hypnagogic album for the digital revolution between the two millennia.
Also in 1998 Sweet Trip released the EP Fish Remixes And Versionswhile the following year is the turn of Aluraan EP of unreleased songs that sticks more faithfully to the ambient-techno language (“Alura”, “Serniga”) but which suggests more aggressive drum'n'bass evolutions (“Palomar, Your Shadow Is the Yellow Sun”). The transition from a pop-rock band to an electronic band is completed by a massive use of computers and software. Viet Le transitions to the role of sound engineer and Aaron Porter is added to the lineup.
Frantic relaxation: the cult masterpiece Velocity : Design : Comfort
Waiting for the sequel Halica it lasts a long time. When it arrives in 2003 Velocity : Design : Comfort Sweet Trip demonstrate that they have substantially evolved their idea of music: the path that led them from more pop-rock debuts towards electronic shores led them to arrive at an unstable synthesis where the melody is constantly attacked by electrostatic discharges, glitchy interruptions and drum'n'bass rhythms. The floating of the past is now a colorful and psychedelic hallucination. It is a sweet noisy dream, inlaid with details and unexpected deviations. In over 73 minutes the 12 songs explode in the listener's mind like a sensorial assault that alternates frenetic and melancholic, mechanical and moving.
“Tekka” is the ambient-techno of Halica chopped and recomposed like a deconstructed and distorted drum'n'bass. “Dsco” is a very sweet post-punk song, scratched by exaggerated distortions. “Fruitcake and Cookies” is an ethereal female song attacked by digital waste, which explodes in shoegaze. “Sept”, perhaps their masterpiece, lulls the listener in a nursery rhyme, while tabla rhythms intertwine in the background and a dreamy orchestral pop emerges, then attacked by the electric guitar; the long queue combines a folk dance with robot funk. A supersonic drum'n'bass rhythm contrasts sharply with the moving fragility of “Pro : Lov : Ad”. “Chocolate Matter” is a rock song, dominated by the electric guitar, with powerful shoegaze explosions and dreamy dream-pop melodies. “Design : 2 : 3” is a shoegaze that is sucked into a psychedelic whirlpool and emerges transformed into a deformed and dreamlike pop, closed by a nostalgic coda.
A part of the album more closely reinterprets the ambient-techno practiced in the previous chapter: in a more refined version glitches in “Velocity” and “Design : 1”; submerged by deafening and lightning-fast rhythms in “Dedicated”.
The richness of Velocity : Design : Comfort It didn't immediately gain the approval of fans, despite some favorable reviews. The web is the place where the cult of the album is nourished, identified in retrospect as an unrepeatable hybrid that combines dream-pop, glitch, shoegaze and electronics without ever reaching a stable balance. On the Rate Your Music website, which collects ratings from registered users, it is included among the 100 best albums of all time and the best of 2003 (precisely #98 as of May 14, 2026). After a very modest promotion and participation in a Darla compilation, the band temporarily interrupted its activity.
Towards pop-psychedelic and the end: the last two albums and the breakup.
In 2006 they reunited, with Viet Le leaving room for Rob Uytingco. The third album, You Will Never Know Why he almost completely abandons digital asperities to embrace a crystalline indie-pop, much more played and traditional. The long and adventurous explorations of the past are replaced by more linear songs such as the danceable “Conservation of Two”, the sweetly melancholic “Air Supply”, the orchestral “Forever”, the oriental “Darkness”, the synth-pop tune “Misfortunes Are Cruel”. If the previous albums looked to the future, here we dust off prog-rock in “Acting” and even the Sixties. To hear a wall of sounds you have to wait for “Your World Is Eternally Complete”, just before the final and Kraftwerk-ian “Female Lover”.
Definitely less visionary than Velocity : Design : Comfort, You Will Never Know Why he cannot compensate with his craft for the drastic creative downsizing: if the previous one is a cult album with a unique blend of contaminations, this third album is pleasant and tidy but rarely surprising and certainly less memorable.
In 2013 Burgos committed a song to SoundCloud, “Things to Ponder While Falling”, which sounds like an epitaph for Sweet Trip. Slowly though Velocity : Design : Comfort is rediscovered and Darla decides to reissue the works on vinyl in 2020. It is the spark that rekindles the engine: Valerie Cooper and Roberto Burgos return to working together. In 2021 they publish A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equalsan album that tries to mend all the souls of the group: the glitchy abstractions, the acoustic ballads and the shoegaze reverbs.
The initial “Tiny Houses” is an unstable, android mixture, which uses psychedelia more than ever to bring together the various souls of the project. Very often, however, Sweet Trip float in a sugary psychedelic pop (“Surviving A Smile”, “Chapters”, “Walkers Beware! We Drive Into The Sun”), exaggerate in pomposity like much lesser versions of Pink Floyd (“The Weight of Comfort, This Rain Is Comfort, This Rain Is You”), shipwreck in the eighties melancholy like unimaginative epigones of the Cocteau Twins (“Eave Foolery Mill Five”, “Snow Purple Treasures”, “You”): they end up being one name among many of the new psychedelia, with flashes of creativity diluted in 75 overabundant minutes.
An overall design is completely missing, even a deconstructed one like in their masterpiece: when the ambient-techno of “Randfilt” arrives it seems above all a nostalgic moment, disconnected from the rest.
The long crescendo of “At Last A Truth That Is Real” is a new epitaph, instrumental and epic. A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals it gives the public the opportunity to recognize a formation that was underestimated twenty years earlier but it is not enough to emancipate themselves from their evidently unrepeatable creative summit.
In 2022, shortly after the publication of the colossal collection of rarities Seen / Unseen, over three and a half hours of material, the band announces their dissolution, this time probably definitive.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
