massive attack : back! back!! back!!!

going to try and hear this today.

One of the things I was surprised by when I first started visiting ILX was the apparent general agreement that Mezzanine was the best Massive Attack album. The highs are colossal but, like Nick says, the second side's a trudge. It's still Blue Lines and Protection all the way for me.

shara nelson is weirdly forgotten isn't she! despite featuring on, like, their signature tune. i used to own her two solo albums and i remember them being pretty good.

i <3 mezzanine throughout - the second half has the amazing title track, "man next door" and i probably prefer the fuller-sounding "black milk" and "group four" to "teardrop", as liz fraser collabs go. only track i don't like on it is "exchange" and even that's more unnecessary than dislikeable.

100th Window is hard to love but there's this wonderful obsessive claustrophobia to it

This is very OTM.

Blue Lines is still their best, tho.

I'm probably alone in liking Splitting the Atom, but I think I appreciate it because it's a group cut that kind of shuffles along. 3d's default attitude/song speed seems to be drudging along so it'll never be Karmacoma. There's nothing that really clenches the sound; it's as if the kind of gritty influence Tricky had could make its way in.

You're right, Lex, Man Next Door is astonishing - forgot that was side two. With Girl I Love You I've decided that Horace is the true hero of Massive Attack. He's always there so you take him for granted, and Light My Fire was notoriously horrible, but without him they'd be screwed.

I don't see how anyone could have heard "One Love" off of the first album and not known that Horace Andy was the keystone to Massive Attack from the very beginning.

Group Four is amazing, one of the best tracks on Mezzanine. It does 'desolate' better than anything else in their catalogue. Also, the "to think that I laid next to you wasting time while I could do a simple job" bit is sort of crushing.

I never liked Black Milk very much, it felt kind of rote by that stage of the game.

Actually, forget that, it's Dissolved Girl that was the rote and generic one, not Black Milk.

worth hearing the original(?) Man Next Door by Dennis Brown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q87PHE7wYU

what MA do with it is markedly excellent tho

no way, "Dissolved Girl" is a swirly stomping trance monster

i never liked Dissolved Girl much. Black Milk is majestic.

me personally i stopped paying as much attention to MA after the second album/the mad professor remix. they started sounding a lot more cold. though ive recently gone back to those later albums and found theres quite a bit to like, but it did seem they started to try and excise their soul/hip-hop/reggae influences as they went on. so interested to hear the new one if it returns to some of their early influences.

though i find myself fwding through the raps on the first album.

It doesn't return to any of their early influences.

Three great things about Man Next Door

1. In the original, the singer is a reasonable man getting aggravated by his neighbours. In the Massive version, he's frothing with paranoia - there might not even be a man next door for all we know.
2. The thematic link with the Cure's 10:15 Saturday Night - that's some clever sampling
3. It was accidentally blasted out of a PA at a Tory conference one year, leading to confused news reports that the Tories wanted to use it as their election theme. That would have been a bold fucking choice.

OMG I JUST REMEMBERED HELICOPTER GIRL lol

they started sounding a lot more cold

this is why mezzanine is so great

1. Didn't the Slits version go halfway towards that?
2. And that lead to Razorlight?
3. um...

xpost - so the guardian review is a load of old shit then? still gonna check it out. though i hated that first lead leak.

i haven't read the guardian review yet. on one listen i thought heligoland was really boring and kinda pointless at this stage, no track leapt out and even the gui boratto remix of the single doesn't improve matters.

Razorlight?

Not heard the Slits cover - that may well be the source of MA's version

All the new one goes back to is having some recognisable tunes.

Could do with some more, though. Shara Nelson, Tracey Thorn and Nicolette all wrote fantastic, striking melodies whereas here Guy Garvey, Tunde etc tone down their melodic instincts to suit the minor-key gloom.

i dont know why they dont go back to sourcing unheard voices rather than their celeb mates.

True true.

true indeed and such a tired roster of celebs.

unrelated but side 2 of Mezzanine is pretty much the essence of that album (a bit like for Disintegration)

OK, so I went back to Mezzanine side 2 and I'm still not convinced. Dissolved Girl is dreadful - overblown guitars, bland vocals - a glimpse of the dud Mezzanine might have been had the overdone the gothic rock moves. Black Milk is the closest they ever came to generic sluggish trip hop. The title track suffers badly by comparison with Risingson. Man Next Door is colossal, and Group Four is far more dramatic than I remembered, but I still think it's too frontloaded to be a masterpiece.

Risingson reminded me that 3D and Daddy G (and sometimes Tricky) trading rhymes used to be one of my favourite sounds in pop. The fact that Splitting the Atom squanders that chemistry on such a lifeless beat is a crying shame. It's interesting that Massive, Tricky and Portishead all fell out of love with hip hop as they got older - in the first two cases it was to their detriment.

i hate their rapping but where they took hip hop in their productions was always more interesting to me. though not when theyre doing more straight up hip hop, i dont think i even liked their collabos with black thought and mos def all that much. i didnt really think of it as them falling out of love with hip hop as they got older - though yes, that makes total sense, and mirrors most people who loved hip hop of their age - i just assumed it was them catering a bit more to their more mainstream base.

Black Milk is the closest they ever came to generic sluggish trip hop.

i don't see how it can be sluggish other than anything at that tempo being sluggish. it's DEFT.

i love Mezzanine the track too, more than Risingson. Group 4 is obviously stunning but one i tended to skip as i was rarely in the mood for it's darkness.

I don't think they're interested in catering tbh. Whatever direction they go in, I think it's entirely sincere. 100th Window was nobody's idea of a crowdpleaser.

I loved their rapping so much - along with Tricky they invented a uniquely British style of MCing that nobody else pursued after them. I say this as someone who generally hates the sound of Brits rapping.

Black Milk is the closest they ever came to generic sluggish trip hop.

idk mane they basically invented it, so i think they have a right to make trip hop! that track is so 1998 it hurts, but i like it. lol "but".

though it doesn't need to be 6:22 long, jeez

too short

he spells it with a $ iirc

98 was a bit late in the day to be making something so straight down the line though - ethereal vocal + hip hop beat/scratching + gothic ambience. Even fucking Crustation were doing it by that point.

all Massive Attack albums are 2 years late

"I loved their rapping so much - along with Tricky they invented a uniquely British style of MCing that nobody else pursued after them. I say this as someone who generally hates the sound of Brits rapping."

i always thought their rapping was a bit more in line with non hip-hop rapping, from people that were obv steeped in hip hop but werent trying to be mcs, like the streets, or - lol- fun loving criminals (i know the vibe is totally diff) etc.

so it has kinda continued, even if its stuff like that guy who did that stars in their eyes song last year.

but MAs flow is basically an old one, just made less forceful (cos that would prob sound silly in their mouths), and more stonerish/quiet (cos that would be scary otherwise). sort of like freedom williams-gone-trip hop.

It's the tone more than the flow - so effortless and, for want of a better word, cool. The way they interacted on Five Man Army, they just sounded like the coolest band on Earth.

youre right. it is 'cool', hence why i thought of huey from the FLC (though i dont really think he was cool). i think they have something in common with the likes of us3 and people like that generally, non hip-hop rap (and for people that might find normal hip hop too hard). i just dont tend to like that 'cool' vibe.

funnily enough, i always thought spaceape would be a great fit for massive attack. i wonder if they ever approached each ogther. wasnt kode 9 originally working with daddy g?

Haha is that the 1st mention of Crustation upthread? I remember buying this album. lol late 90s

I spent most of this weekend listening to this album. I have no idea what the people who dislike this are hearing because, to my ears, it is competing with Owen P's Heartland for best album of 2010 so far.

Ordered this from Amazon. For some reason it will be arriving today, not last Tuesday -- maybe they had the release date somehow mixed up. Was it pushed forward? In any case... expectations not too high for this, but hoping to find a few great tracks among the rest. I was blown away by their live show in 2006 (I think), but I'm prepared for a mediocre album.

this is the original of man next door aka I've Got To Get Away

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRDILYQqUkM

although my favourite is Dave Barker's version which also predates the Dennis Brown one (can't find this on youtube) and may actually be superior even to the massive attack take.

I also love this tune, which I think it's loosely based on. Definitely lyrical similarities. Coincidentally, Johnny Dollar was the alias of one of the guys who worked with Massive Attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rEU5v_LGE

oh that's nice. curiouser and curiouser. here's the Dave Barker Version: "i just can't stand it!/ i just can't stand it!"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/v9azep

I have no idea what the people who dislike this are hearing
i hear a record which seems to be made by a robot or something. unimaginative, lifeless, boring, repetitive tracks which go nowhere. except the two songs i mentioned before. what do i miss? does the album get better by each listen? btw the cover art is abominable too.

^ they should ban it from the underground