SPILL NEW MUSIC: TRIP-HOP PIONEER ERIC HILTON (OF THIEVERY CORPORATION) ANNOUNCES BRAND NEW ALBUM ‘THE EASY UNDERGROUND’ OUT NOVEMBER 20

TRIP-HOP PIONEER ERIC HILTON (OF THIEVERY CORPORATION) ANNOUNCES BRAND NEW ALBUM THE EASY UNDERGROUND OUT NOVEMBER 20

MONTSERRAT HOUSE

Montserrat House Music and Eric Hilton are excited to announce the Friday, November 20 release of The Easy Underground, the trip-hop pioneer’s forthcoming studio album. An homage to Hilton’s long-standing fascination with the elegant, cinematic, and frequently overlooked sounds of the 1960s and ’70s, The Easy Underground spirits listeners away to a breezily romantic world of whispered promises and slow-burned deep kisses.

Joining Hilton for this project is longtime musical compadre Natalia Clavier, who sings on nine of the album’s 13 tracks, in multiple languages. Fans of Thievery Corporation’s 2013 album Saudade will find The Easy Underground tonally adjacent, with flavors of bossa nova, Brazilian rhythms, and female vocals present on both. But while the two records share some common ingredients, Hilton’s solo recipe has deeper grooves, more space, and isn’t following an established blueprint. He’s taking the easy listening thing and pulling it into the underground.

“I’m intrigued by music that can exist both in the foreground and the background; you just put it on and let it vibe and seep in, in its own way,” Hilton says. “But if you listen very intently, off in your own little world, you’ll get a lot out of it. And that’s a world I call ‘The Easy Underground.” Stream the album’s first single, “Promise Me,” featuring Natalia Clavier on YouTube.

Eric Hilton’s intrigue with the oft-maligned ‘Easy Listening’ genre began years ago. “My introduction to the quiet sounds began in my late teens with a chance discovery of Stan Getz and Luis Bonfá’s album Jazz Samba Encore!” he explains. “Until that moment, I had never considered how beautifully powerful these more nuanced records could be.”

“From there, I delved into 1960s Brazilian music and soon discovered inspiring film soundtracks from the same era. I immersed myself in the works of Lalo Schifrin, Sérgio Mendes, Francis Lai, Henry Mancini, and many other composers, many of whom worked with studio groups and small orchestras. Throughout my own evolution as an artist and producer, these softer sounds continued to captivate and inspire me.”

There is an unmistakable sense of time and place in his new offering, The Easy Underground, but Hilton’s intention is not to recreate the past. He is interested in the atmosphere that those records created: the warmth of a small orchestra, the intimacy of a softly played rhythm section, the subtle drama of strings and woodwinds, the seductive pull of a melody that never needs to announce itself. In an age of increasingly compressed and frenetic music, there is something almost radical about restraint.

“The music I love from that period never seemed to be trying too hard to get your attention,” Hilton says. “There is a confidence in allowing a song to breathe. A lot of contemporary music is about a predictably manufactured impact. I’m interested in a more demure, rarefied mood.”

That sensibility has been present throughout Hilton’s work, from his early explorations of dub and bossa nova to the expansive musical vocabulary of Thievery Corporation. This signature production approach has permeated his subsequent solo recordings. Yet The Easy Underground feels like a return to a particularly personal source: the records that first taught him that quiet music could carry enormous emotional weight. These are sounds for late nights, long drives, dimly lit rooms, and the hours when the world finally begins to recede. Music that doesn’t demand attention, but rewards it.

Eric Hilton
The Easy Underground
(Montserrat House)
Release Date: November 20, 2026

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Photo Credit: Puma Ptah