I’m not sure what connects this moment to the 90s exactly. Maybe it’s atmosphere. Maybe it’s the start of a new era. Maybe we’re just craving more space in our music the way we crave it in our lives. But whatever it is, it feels like a soundtrack to now. A mellow and slow, deliberate mood that we haven’t named yet, and maybe one we don’t need to. - MC for Herb SundaysThe term Downtempo has always been used more as a catch-all than a genre, a rough signifier that either elicits ‘90s nostalgia or something vaguely dim. Because of this, Downtempo has never been a terribly fashionable term to claim, compared to the cooler genre buddies that it sits alongside, and even when out of vogue, it doesn’t take up much space in the closet. But with enough distance from its commercial heights (much like Trance, which we covered in these pages), the appeal is resonant again.For our purposes, we’ll use Downtempo to include the genres of Trip-Hop, with edges of chunky Ambient, mottled IDM, obtuse Bleep, Cool Britannia Indie and its Big Beat remixes, Drum & Bass, Chill-Out (and its wayfaring cousin, Balearic) and Instrumental Hip-Hop. Some consider the train line to continue through Chillwave and Lo-Fi Hip-Hop, but the playlist Cina made hews to the previous sentence.At its peak, Downtempo, including the cultural inputs of Bay Area-bred Indie Hip-Hop and Turntablism (from which DJ Shadow arrived, midwifed by James Lavelle and Mo’ Wax, see Rob Sevier (of Numero Group) Mo’ Wax playlist below, for further Jazz Fudge) and a more celebrated DJ culture (Turntables are outselling guitars!), had not only infiltrated the new spread of boutique hotel lobbies and restaurants as an audio shorthand for a jetset luxury but even the gamut of pop (bands like Sugar Ray, Incubus and Limp Biskit had in-band DJs) and some of tastiest hits of Fin-de-Siècle/Y2K pop, including The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” or the sly the Can-Pop of Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” (built around an Andrea True Connection loop