 |
| Track list: 1. Safe From Harm 2. One Love 3. Blue Lines 4. Be Thankful For What You've Got 5. Five Man Army 6. Unfinished Sympathy 7. Daydreaming 8. Lately 9. Hymn Of The Big Wheel Running time: 45 minutes Released: 1991 |
Ten years ago this would definitely have been tagged as a favourite. Now I'm not so certain. I pretty much guarantee I'll love it, but it isn't a disc I return to often. I have the original, not the remastered version and I think that I got into this through my brother - not unusual way back when; though he is younger than me he bought more music than I when we were in our teens. To think this is almost 25 years old now... its a true classic, but how does it listen this much later?
Two full albums in a day... I could be listening to this year's Mercury winner (which I need to do some point soon having picked it up, and it being an A), but the only reason I am doing this post now is that I want to hear these tunes.
The bass riff that forms the structure of Safe From Harm is iconic, Shara Nelson's vocal is amazing. Talk about setting a tone in the first 30 seconds. The periphery of the bass is incidental. There's stuff there but that riff is so strong. I have the disc of the samples that inspired Massive Attack somewhere in the future so that I can appreciate the source but there is no doubt at all that this stands as a shining example of how to sample and enhance. At 5 minutes the track feels short, compared with the tunes I listened to earlier which overstayed their welcome. I really should tag this "favourites" after all so I have. It only took 10 seconds to convince me.
Horace Andy appears for the first time on One Love. It never ceases to amaze me how many Massive Attack tunes are made or broken by this man. Either by the application of his vocal, or by virtue of being re-imaginings of songs from his past. There is a cool menace in the track here, and that combination of words is not a natural one. It's funny what the slightly tipsy brain will produce. In addition to wanting, and indulging, to listen to this now, I have a) just watched ep. 3 of London Spy - some very nice scenes - and seen trails for Luther and Line of Duty, two shows I am very pleased will reappear on screen soon. It's been a good evening in that regard.
Blue Lines sees us exposed to early Tricky for the first time, less angry here than on his own stuff. The interplay between the vocalists is nice, backed by a very chilled rhythm. Its a style that is really hard to deliver well - there is almost nothing to it in places. Many imitators since have failed to pull off the heady blend... just recently I branded Abraham lazy and faddish for their light-touch downbeat electronica. This is how to achieve that chillout goal whilst still being engaging. Do it first.
The sweet transition into Be Thankful for What You've Got is a magical moment. It's born from a pointed end to Blue Lines, and the immediate uptake of a rhythm so funky its not funny. Like much of the work that covers Horace Andy, this is not sample so much as cover, which I had never really appreciated. The original is on Protected so I'll compare and contrast in, I dunno, a decade? I am sure I've said on these pages before that I went to uni in Bristol, and in my first year there, after Massive Attack released Mezzanine I stayed late in the run-up to Christmas to see these guys play the Student Union. It remains a fond, if faded, memory. Later, when I was studying in Bath, I used to travel over to Bristol every week to game. On my way from station to location I walked through the parts of the city that spawned the Bristol Sound, and in that way you do, you think you see local celebs from time to time. Don't know if I ever really did though. Thought I saw Beth Gibbons of Portishead in a sandwich shop once too. Hah.
Five Man army comes and goes, a nice groove but really just a fill-in before the undoubted high point of Unfinished Sympathy. This really is a modern classic, a truly iconic tune in more ways than one. I get goose pimples as it starts, that off-kilter tapping, not quite tuneful bells and the sampled "hey hey hey hey". It is the start of the strings and the vocal that really set things moving though. Nelson's voice creams it, soulful and yearning, the strings speaking to loss. There is one moment at 2:24, when the piano comes in for a quick bridge that I always loved. It has less impact now, perhaps because I was so anticipating it. It's amazing the interplay between the percussion, which is tense and snappy, and the tune which is laid back and easy. They bottled something and released it here.
Two full albums in a day... I could be listening to this year's Mercury winner (which I need to do some point soon having picked it up, and it being an A), but the only reason I am doing this post now is that I want to hear these tunes.
The bass riff that forms the structure of Safe From Harm is iconic, Shara Nelson's vocal is amazing. Talk about setting a tone in the first 30 seconds. The periphery of the bass is incidental. There's stuff there but that riff is so strong. I have the disc of the samples that inspired Massive Attack somewhere in the future so that I can appreciate the source but there is no doubt at all that this stands as a shining example of how to sample and enhance. At 5 minutes the track feels short, compared with the tunes I listened to earlier which overstayed their welcome. I really should tag this "favourites" after all so I have. It only took 10 seconds to convince me.
Horace Andy appears for the first time on One Love. It never ceases to amaze me how many Massive Attack tunes are made or broken by this man. Either by the application of his vocal, or by virtue of being re-imaginings of songs from his past. There is a cool menace in the track here, and that combination of words is not a natural one. It's funny what the slightly tipsy brain will produce. In addition to wanting, and indulging, to listen to this now, I have a) just watched ep. 3 of London Spy - some very nice scenes - and seen trails for Luther and Line of Duty, two shows I am very pleased will reappear on screen soon. It's been a good evening in that regard.
Blue Lines sees us exposed to early Tricky for the first time, less angry here than on his own stuff. The interplay between the vocalists is nice, backed by a very chilled rhythm. Its a style that is really hard to deliver well - there is almost nothing to it in places. Many imitators since have failed to pull off the heady blend... just recently I branded Abraham lazy and faddish for their light-touch downbeat electronica. This is how to achieve that chillout goal whilst still being engaging. Do it first.
The sweet transition into Be Thankful for What You've Got is a magical moment. It's born from a pointed end to Blue Lines, and the immediate uptake of a rhythm so funky its not funny. Like much of the work that covers Horace Andy, this is not sample so much as cover, which I had never really appreciated. The original is on Protected so I'll compare and contrast in, I dunno, a decade? I am sure I've said on these pages before that I went to uni in Bristol, and in my first year there, after Massive Attack released Mezzanine I stayed late in the run-up to Christmas to see these guys play the Student Union. It remains a fond, if faded, memory. Later, when I was studying in Bath, I used to travel over to Bristol every week to game. On my way from station to location I walked through the parts of the city that spawned the Bristol Sound, and in that way you do, you think you see local celebs from time to time. Don't know if I ever really did though. Thought I saw Beth Gibbons of Portishead in a sandwich shop once too. Hah.
Five Man army comes and goes, a nice groove but really just a fill-in before the undoubted high point of Unfinished Sympathy. This really is a modern classic, a truly iconic tune in more ways than one. I get goose pimples as it starts, that off-kilter tapping, not quite tuneful bells and the sampled "hey hey hey hey". It is the start of the strings and the vocal that really set things moving though. Nelson's voice creams it, soulful and yearning, the strings speaking to loss. There is one moment at 2:24, when the piano comes in for a quick bridge that I always loved. It has less impact now, perhaps because I was so anticipating it. It's amazing the interplay between the percussion, which is tense and snappy, and the tune which is laid back and easy. They bottled something and released it here.
Daydreaming has never really worked for me - as a concept or a song. The backing track just doesn't quite do it for me. Here the rhythm of it gets overpowering, a loop too far in terms of its impact on the experience for me... its very easy to get sucked into that beat pattern and miss everything else, which is what happened to me just now. Lately changed it up and I suddenly snapped out of a wander. This has the same problem of an over-bearing central hook, but manages it better through strings and another Nelson vocal which follows the pattern of the rhythm in an interesting way.
The album ends with another high point. The Hymn of the Big Wheel is just a gorgeous little rhythm behind a very simple tune, but it owes all of its magic to Horace Andy's vocal. Man, I love the way he sings this. All love, released; free. In truth, re-tagging it as a favourite is probably a bit of a push. There are to my mind four stand out songs on this disc: Safe From Harm, Be Thankful... Unfinished Sympathy and this. It's less than half of the album, but these tunes are timelessly good and elevate an enjoyable if somewhat surpassed effort to something that few discs can really claim to match: genre definition.
No comments:
Post a Comment