Herbaliser is the most hip-hop of the Ninja Tune lot, and previous releases (such as Remedies and the New and Improved EP) have illustrated a knack for filling out the jazz and funk roots of hip-hop while remaining both deep and kicking. Blow Your Headphones ups the ante considerably, with a nonstop soul-drop that pushes the beats even further forward and thins the extraneous samples and genre-references. The result is less differentiable from straight-ahead hip-hop (save for the fact the album's mostly instrumental), but is also less derivative of acid and soul jazz, a connection that tended to mar their previous work. ~ Sean Cooper, All Music Guide
Patrick Dawes (Percussion), Malachi (Producer), Justin Whillock (Mixing), Jonny Cuba (Producer), No Sleep Nigel (Mixing), The Herbaliser (Mixing), The Herbaliser (Producer), Kaidi Tatham (Producer)
Blow Your Headphones is the second album by The Herbaliser. It was released on Ninja Tune in 1997. It marks a change in the overall production technique for this group, where the recording and manipulation of musicians partially replaces the use of samples of other recordings that had been the main technique of earlier Herbaliser productions. It also expands the use of guest hip-hop vocalists such as What? What?, who would later become better known as Jean Grae. On other selections the music turns to a more directly jazz-influenced construction on several tracks, notably "Mr. Chombee Has The Flaw" and "Ginger Jumps The Fence".
