Hot Trip to Heaven is the fifth studio album by British rock band Love and Rockets, released in 1994 on Beggars Banquet in the United Kingdom and American in the United States. Released after a five-year hiatus, the album saw the band drop their former gothic, alternative rock sound in favour of a hi-tech electronic, ambient direction, taking influences from ambient techno artists such as The Orb and Orbital, while retaining the band's psychedelic focus. The group were first intrigued in making electronic music at the start of the decade. The songs on Hot Trip to Heaven are longer than those on Love and Rockets' previous albums, encompassing a broader tonal range. Natacha Atlas, with whom drummer Kevin Haskins worked during the band's hiatus, performs additional vocals and percussion on the record, lending it a world music influence. Promoted by the singles "Body and Soul" and "This Heaven", Hot Trip to Heaven was released to indifference from fans, alienating much of their core college rock audience, and was a commercial failure. However, the album received generally positive reviews from music critics, who praised the band's radical new direction, with some calling the album sensual and among the band's greatest work to date. Lead singer Daniel Ash remains proud of the album. Background and recording After the commercial success of alternative rock band Love and Rockets' self-titled fourth album from 1989, which produced the hit single "So Alive", which reached number 3 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart the same year, the band took a hiatus in the early 1990s, during which the band worked on solo material and on other projects, including the band's drummer Kevin Haskins producing material by Egyptian-Belgian singer Natacha Atlas of Trans-Global Underground. The band became intrigued in recording dance-oriented music around 1989–1990, as the band listened to the music of Happy Mondays, Spiritualized and The Orb. Furthermore, Haskins had been using drum machines for some time, whereas vocalist Daniel Ash used a $35 drum machine when recording as Tones on Tail in the early 1980s. Ash later recalled that it was primarily listening to the Orb, Orbital and Leftfield that sparked the band's interest in making electronic music: "I started to hear that stuff in the '90s. It completely seduced Love and Rockets. We completely fell in with that attitude toward music. That's why we made Hot Trip to Heaven." After the band's break,