Thievery Corporation on Vinyl: Where to Start and Where to Go Next

Thievery Corporation started in the summer of 1995 in a Washington, D.C. basement bar. Rob Garza met Eric Hilton at the Eighteenth Street Lounge, which Hilton co-owned, and the two found they were chasing the same records: dub plates, bossa nova sides, reggae, jazz. In 1996 they turned the bar's name into a label, Eighteenth Street Lounge Music, and started putting out their own music on it.

The method has held for thirty years. Garza and Hilton build the beds themselves, heavy on dub bass, sitar, Brazilian guitar and analog echo, then hand the microphone to a rotating cast of singers. Lyrics arrive in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Portuguese, Romanian and Hindi, and the politics are never far from the surface: the band has been openly anti-war since the early 2000s and has put that on album covers as readily as in the songs.

That makes them an unusual catalog to collect, because no two records solve the same problem. One is a sample collage, one is a bossa nova album, one is a protest record with West African and Indian players on it, one is the whole songbook rewritten for an orchestra. Here is every Thievery Corporation album we carry, in order, and where to start.

Thievery Corporation - Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi

The debut appeared in Germany in 1996 and reached the United States on ESL in June 1997. Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi is the purest sample record they made, stitching hip-hop breaks to easy listening strings to samba, with Pam Bricker and Bebel Gilberto singing over the top. It is dedicated to Antonio Carlos Jobim, which tells you where the duo's heart was from day one.

Why it's worth purchasing:

• The 1996 debut, and the template for everything the duo did after it
• Early vocal turns from Pam Bricker and Bebel Gilberto
• This 2022 remaster is pressed on orange color vinyl

Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy

If you buy one, buy this one. The Mirror Conspiracy came out in April 2000 through ESL Music and 4AD after three years of work, and it holds "Lebanese Blonde," the Pam Bricker vocal with Rob Myers on sitar that became the band's signature. LouLou Ghelichkhani arrives on "Shadows of Ourselves" and "Le Monde," Bebel Gilberto returns for "So com voce," and the whole thing moves at a walking pace. We also carry it as a white color reissue.

Why it's worth purchasing:

• The 2000 album most people mean when they say Thievery Corporation
• Home to "Lebanese Blonde," "Shadows of Ourselves" and "Le Monde"
• Released jointly by the band's own ESL Music and 4AD

Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man in Babylon

Recorded across two years and released in the autumn of 2002 on ESL Music, The Richest Man in Babylon is the record where the guest list becomes the point. Emiliana Torrini sings "Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes" and "Until the Morning," Pam Bricker takes "All That We Perceive," Notch fronts the title track, and Sleepy Wonder and Shinehead close things out on "The State of the Union." It is the warmest album in the catalog and the easiest to put on for a room.

Why it's worth purchasing:

• The 2002 third album, built around a deep bench of guest singers
• Two Emiliana Torrini vocals, including "Until the Morning"
• The dub and Brazilian threads of the first two records pulled into one place

Thievery Corporation - Cosmic Game

Cut at The Consulate in Washington, D.C. and released in February 2005, The Cosmic Game is darker and more psychedelic than what came before, and it brought in voices nobody expected: Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips on "Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun)," Perry Farrell on "Revolution Solution," David Byrne on "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter." This is the twentieth anniversary pressing.

Why it's worth purchasing:

• The 2005 album, and the strangest, heaviest record they have made
• Guest vocals from David Byrne, Perry Farrell and Wayne Coyne
• A twentieth anniversary pressing of an album recorded in the band's home city

Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation

September 2008, ESL Music, and the most political thing they ever put their name to. Garza described Radio Retaliation as an overt statement, and the record backs him: Subcomandante Marcos on the sleeve, Femi Kuti on "Vampires," Seu Jorge on "Hare Krisna," Anoushka Shankar playing sitar on "Mandala," and D.C. go-go founder Chuck Brown on "The Numbers Game."

Why it's worth purchasing:

• The 2008 album, recorded in Washington, D.C. over sixteen months
• Femi Kuti, Seu Jorge, Anoushka Shankar and Chuck Brown all appear
• The clearest statement of the band's politics on record

Thievery Corporation - It Takes a Thief

Garza and Hilton picked these sixteen themselves, which is why It Takes a Thief works better than most career surveys. Issued on Eighteenth Street Lounge Music in 2010 and subtitled The Very Best of Thievery Corporation on several editions, it runs "Lebanese Blonde," "Amerimacka," "Until the Morning," "Sweet Tides," "Vampires" and the title track of the Babylon album into one sequence. Start here if you want the shape of the catalog before you commit to a single album.

Why it's worth purchasing:

• A 2010 retrospective sequenced by Garza and Hilton themselves
• Sixteen tracks spanning the first fourteen years of the group
• The cleanest entry point for anyone new to the band

Thievery Corporation - Saudade

The bossa nova album they had been circling since the Jobim dedication on the debut. Released in March 2014 on ESL Music and produced by Christopher "Stone" Garrett, Saudade hands almost every track to a different singer: Lou Lou Ghelichkhani, Karina Zeviani, Elin Melgarejo, Natalia Clavier and Shana Halligan. The title is Portuguese for longing, and Hilton has called it his favorite thing the duo did.

Why it's worth purchasing:

• The 2014 album, forty-two minutes of bossa nova and Latin jazz with no beats to hide behind
• Five different lead vocalists across thirteen songs
• A tenth anniversary pressing on light blue color vinyl

Thievery Corporation - Symphonik

In May 2017 the band played the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. backed by an orchestra, and liked it enough to make a record of it. Symphonik arrived on ESL Music in April 2020 with Prague's FILMharmonic Orchestra supplying the strings and horns, engineered and co-produced by longtime collaborator Gianmaria Conti. The first thing they rebuilt was "Lebanese Blonde," which should tell you how seriously they took it.

Why it's worth purchasing:

• The 2020 album, the catalog rewritten for Prague's FILMharmonic Orchestra
• Grew out of a 2017 orchestral concert at the Kennedy Center
• The one Thievery Corporation record that works at dinner volume and at full volume

If You Like Thievery Corporation

• Massive Attack: the Bristol end of the same idea, and the name that comes up most often on our Thievery shelf talkers.
• Portishead: slower, colder and built on the same love of dusty samples and a singer out front.
• Bonobo: picks up the downtempo thread in the 2000s and runs it through live players and jazz chords.
• Air: the French answer, lighter on dub and heavier on analog synthesizers and melody.
• Morcheeba: warm, blues-tinted downtempo for the same late evening as The Richest Man in Babylon.

There is more once these are on the shelf: Culture of Fear from 2011, the Jamaica-recorded The Temple of I & I from 2017 and its companion Treasures from the Temple, plus Babylon Rewound, the 2004 dub rebuild of the third album. Browse everything the duo has in one place in our Thievery Corporation collection, go wider in Downtempo and Electronic, or read where the British side of this sound began in our trip-hop starter's guide.

It's all in GOOD TASTE.