Blue Lines - Massive Attack

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. 

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.

100th Window - Massive Attack

Track List:

1. Future Proof
2. What Your Soul Sings
3. Everywhen
4. Special Cases
5. Butterfly Caught
6. A Prayer for England
7. Small Time Shot Away
8. Name Taken
9. Antistar

Running time: 73 minutes
Released: 2003

I've been away a bit, not jacked the project in quite so soon. Back from a 5 day jaunt to Scandiwegia to see an old friend and the 4 kids they have had since we last met. Squeezing this in before I am off away again - this time to my niece's 4th birthday party. Life is busy sometimes, just not often.

Everyone (pretty much) thinks Massive Attack peaked with Mezzanine. They are probably all right.* Seeing them play Bristol Student Union just after that album was released is still a highlight, 16 years on.

My memory tells me that there are good songs on 100th Window, which was what followed, but also some weaker material. And the 19 minute length of Antistar reminds me of hidden track nonsense.

Future Proof confirms that initial thought - I have always liked this track. It is dark and brooding, good mood music for an urban or cyberpunk RPG session, with the electronic clicks reminiscent of background static in a slightly frantic percussive manner. The light airy vocal, disconnected from the ominous track enforces that sense of unease; it works for me. We then move on to the first of 3 tracks voiced by Sinéad O'Connor.  I think that, at the time, I did not realise all 3 tracks with female vocals were O'Connor - not sure why. I certainly did not realise at the time that Damon Albarn (credited as 2D from Gorillaz) was involved, but back then I thought Blur were shite and nothing of Albarn as an artist. Times change us. I am not fond of What Your Soul Sings, I just find it really bland - lyrically, vocally, musically, it is just dull. It is also too long, but that makes it feel such a relief when it gives way to Everywhen. I fell in love with Horace Andy's vocals the first time I heard him on a Massive Attack record (probably One Love or Hymn of the Big Wheel from Blue Lines), and picked up some collections of his reggae recordings later on, to find that several Massive Attack songs with him doing a new vocal are pretty much re-recordings. I do not think Everywhen is in that category, but I could be wrong. It plays a bit like a less urgent Future Proof, with an unsettling, dangerous air, a floaty voice and relatively clean sound in place of the more chaotic opener. I would say it is a slightly more hopeful track, but it is hope stemming from darkness all the same, and a rich darkness at that. It is probably the best track on this album for my money, and my instinct is that 100th Window's bolt is now shot.

Special Cases is more O'Connor; it is less dull than What Your Soul Sings and there is much more going on but I still cannot find any love for it. The doomy theme continues, which makes it powerful background sound, but for actually listening to? No thanks. I do not own any Sinéad O'Connor records and do not find her voice doing anything for me, though I do think A Prayer for England utilises her better (or perhaps it is just a better song). As Butterfly Caught starts, I find myself not recognising it which is slightly disturbing, and the first of what I guess will be many such experiences of going "oh, that's not what I thought it was" for this project. Not knowing stuff before I get to it is one thing, but not recognising something I thought I knew is different, unsettling. Like this track (which I recognise once more once the vocal comes in). An edginess and paranoia flow from my speakers, quite at odds with the brightness of the day outside. It is midmorning on a Friday - not the ideal time to immerse oneself in the themes of this record.

My time in Brizzle was right at the tail end of the Bristol sound ("don't call it Trip-Hop") era. Mezzanine was just out and was the end of that era of Massive Attack, Portishead had gone on their long break etc. I also lived in very different parts of the city to those that spawned the edginess. Still, I feel a degree of affinity to the place and the music it spawned even now, when it is a part of my life that is fading in memory - contacts lost, friends rarely seen etc. Listening to these bands brings back those thoughts.

Yeah - A Prayer For England is just a better song. There is purpose in the driving bass, menace even. That links with the urgency of the vocal and the lyrics and the slightly shorter length to produce a much more compelling listen. There is almost a relief when it gives way to the more chilled Small Time Shot Away; chilled, but still dark. More cyberpunk mood music. Albarn's backing vocal is so indistinct that I miss it even knowing it is there now - I mean, it is audible in places, but hard to tell who it is. The last 30 seconds of the track are really weak... continuation for continuation's sake and I am definitely relieved when Name Taken starts. It is another slow dark menace sound, rather than urgent dark menace (this album only has two flavours). Andy is back, again floating over the music angelically, reinforcing him being up there as one of my favourite male vocalists of all time - along with the sadly missed Terry Callier - who, of course, provided the vocal on Massive Attack's Live With Me (along with Paradise Circus from Heligoland, which was used as the theme for the BBC's Luther, the only great tracks Massive Attack produced since Teardrop). I am certainly struggling to find too many other names to challenge those two on a purely vocal level.

Ah, now we're into the dregs. Antistar just started and I cannot find much to like in its opening refrains. Calling the bolt shot after Everywhen was harsh as although the middle of the album is not superb it generally retains a level of interest and is certainly keeping a consistent theme which makes the album as a whole a very attractive keeper. The vocal mellows Antistar a bit, but not enough to make it a good listen; the menace is still there though and I realise that for proper mood music I would want to dump the vocal anyway as it would be a distraction. Too bad.

Right, now to see about this secret track bullshit. It actually starts fairly promptly - which is good - but as I recalled it is just a loopy, oscillating, bassy sound which lasts far too long. It ceases to be interesting almost as soon as it starts and... zzz

* If anything, it was earlier.