Who Are Massive Attack?
Massive Attack formed in 1988 in Bristol, England. Members Grant Marshall, Robert Del Naja, Andrew Vowles, and Tricky came out of the Wild Bunch, a group of DJs and audio engineers, who started performing in 1982. They were marked by their diversity – “English, West Indian and American musicians whose backgrounds were in hip-hop, reggae, rap, soul, and pop music.” CM
They “adapted the Jamaican tradition of sound systems to British clubs.” CM They were, as a review in the Guardian said, “a collective who did not play any instruments themselves and employed other artists to augment – and in some cases – define their electronically driven sound and vision.” IB-114
Bristol
In the early ‘80s, the “Bristol sound” “fused angular reggae guitars, spacey reverb, and funk bass with the complex percussive polyrhythm and chromatic dexterity more associated with free jazz..” IB-17 Thanks to Massive Attack, this sound became known as trip-hop and suddenly this “unattractive west-coast English port changed music.” CM
As a university town, Bristol sees “a constant influx of young people from throughout the UK, which consistently generates fresh ranks of both audiences and instrumentalists.” IB-15 The University of Bristol “specializes in classical and avant-garde composition and even more arcane medieval forms. The DIY zeal of the punk scene was therefore counterbalanced by virtuosic players and traditional jazz hangs. Even now, a quick walk around Bristol…reveals a high concentration of stores selling instruments and production equipment.” IP-16
The Birth of Trip-Hop
Massive Attack’s debut album, Blue Lines, is celebrated as not only “the first trip-hop album” CM but the genre’s “first masterpiece.” AM Mixmag’s Andy Permberton allegedly coined the term while music critic Simon Reynolds said Massive Attack are “widley regarded as the genre’s inventors.” IB-67 It “defined much of the decade to follow,” IB-67 “setting the American hip hop formula to a mossy electronic backdrop.” PM
In simplistic terms, prior to trip-hop if music “had a synth, it was electronic(a) or ‘techno;’ if it had a breakbeat of featured a black producer, it was typically couched as some variant of ‘rap.’” IB-22 Trip-hop was “music that relied on sampling and breakbeats, music that was for and by producers (people who liked record stores) and less for MCs – especially MCs in the American model.” IB-71
Trip-hop however, was more than just a blend of electronica and hip-hop. It also integrated acid house, “classic soul, dub reggae,..and even psychedelic rock.” URB Blue Lines displayed a “wide-ranging palette of influences; a rottedness in diasporic textures and production techniques; a merger of the atmospheric, introspective, and cerebral; and crucially, a subtle but distinct political edge.” IB-4
“Unlike the club music that had come before, Blue Lines was down-tempo with heavy dub grooves that really moved forward but at a languid pace.” CM As Grant Marshall said, “We were trying to…create dance music for the head rather than feet.” IB-6 “This was music that transcended the nightclubs.” CM The sound has been associated with fellow Bristol artist Neneh Cherry as well as British groups Soul II Soul and Portishead.
British Urban Music
Trip-hop was a genre which essentially filtered “American hip-hop through the lens of British club culture.” AM Blue Lines can be viewed “as the beginnings of a truly British form of urban music, one that spoke to the specific contours of black life in England.” IB-128 “Records like Blue Lines did important work precisely because they incorporated styles drawn from Britain’s anti-Conservative punks and black immigrants, and because they carried all of these worlds in the same breath.” IB-130
Relationship to Hip-Hop
In many ways, Blue Lines was “a hip-hop record – it relied on genre-defining techniques such as sampling and scratching. Many of its verses are unmistakably rapped rather than whispered or sung.” IB-77 Grant Marshall said, “in the beginning, the sampler was our main musical instrument…when we first formed Massive Attack, basically we were DJs who went into the studio with our favorite records and created tracks.” IB-112
Music for After the Club
However, while “most hip-hop of the era was made explicitly for blasting from car stereos or banging away at the club, Blue Lines represented a shift toward records made for the lounge or the bedroom,” IB-78 sometimes described as “headphone hip-hop, slowed down moon music for darkened bedroom listening.” IB-65 As Marshall said, “We were making the type of music for after the club. You’ve come home and you’re off your head and you want to relax.” IB-22
The genre’s “dark moodiness…exists in that twilight realm between sleep and waking” RV creating “a stylish, nocturnal sense of scene that encompassed music from rare groove to dub to dance.” AM It “balances dark, diva-led club jams along the lines of Soul II Soul with some of the best British rap (vocals and production) heard up to that point, occasionally on the same track.” AM
The Songs
Here are thoughts on individual songs.
“Safe from Harm”
“The opener Safe from Harm is the best example” AM of “this new breed of sound and all of the throbbing ecstasy it entails.” RV It features “ghostly whooshes and a dose of reverb, but it paired rasped or whispered stanzas of rhymes with [singer Shara] Nelson’s searing diva hooks.” IB-47 She “lays the vocals over…pulsing beats and balances Tricky Kid’s monotone rap style.” RV Videos for this song and three others from the album “brought both Tricky and Nelson into the limelight, making them the faces of Massive Attack.” IB-113
“One Love”
“Even more than hip-hop or dance, however, dub is the big touchstone on Blue Lines. Most of the productions aren’t quite as earthy as you’d expect, but the influence is palpable in the atmospherics of the songs, like the faraway electric piano on One Love (with beautiful vocals from the near-legendary Horace Andy).” AM
It’s a “model of simplicity with its drum machine-beat, barely-there bass throb, and iconic electric piano – purloined from a lengthier Mahavishnu Orchestra workout – which has been looped to sound like a hammered guitar roof.” IB-46 While not complex, “the track was an adept erger of new production techniques and a DJ’s sense of how funk textures might interlock like puzzle pieces.” IB-46 The song “cements an unmistakable psychic tone that elevates Blue Lines beyond the hodge-podge of singles and castoffs that often characterized the hip-hop or dance album format.” IB-33
“Five Man Army”
Five Man Army “makes the dub inspiration explicit, with a clattering percussion line, moderate reverb on the guitar and drums, and Andy’s exquisite falsetto flitting over the chorus.” AM It is “a highpoint of the album and the one most evidently an inheritor of the UK reggae subgenres that prefigure it.” IB-34 In fact, Paste magazine’s Ted Davis calls it “the album’s clear highlight.” PM
“The song pinpoints a grayscale, marbled smoothness at the heart of Blue Lines.” PM It “features spoken-word verses from The Wild Bunch sound system affiliate Willy Wee” PM “calmly rapping over a dub reggae-laced downtempo beat.” PM The track is “all throbbing, spidery bass, reverb-soaked-up-picks on the guitar syncopated rim clicks and little riffs on something that sounds like a synthesized melodica.” IB-34
“Be Thankful for What You’ve Got”
This is a “lovely, if lesser known, paean to the virtues of gratitude.” IB-72 It “is quite close to the smooth soul tune conjured by its title.” AM “It’s fair to say that the message of this song is precisely the opposite of what was on offer in most American hip-hop.” IB-73
The original version of “Be Thankful for What You’ve Got” was by William DeVaughn in 1974. “It’s languid, funky, with an insistent beat layered in the sumptuous instrumentation so typical of the era’s productions.” IB-75 Rather than just sample a few bars of the song, though, Massive Attack “produced what amounts to a thoughtful cover, but using production techniques suited to the hip-hop era.” IB-73
“Unfinished Sympathy”
This is “the group’s first classic production…a tremendously moving fusion of up-tempo hip-hop and dancefloor jam with slow-moving, syrupy strings.” AM Thi was “an influential, landmark song influencing many subsequent British artists.” CM
Both this and “Safe From Harm” “are chillout classics, driven by undulating basslines, blissful synthesizer pads, and crisp percussion.” PM “Unfinished Sympathy” is “one of the most widely discussed ‘electronic’ singles of the decade and a landmark production.” IB-118 “Many critics, musicians, and casual listeners consider ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ to be the most beautiful ‘dance’ record ever produced.” IB-115
“Daydreaming”
This song “is, in many ways, a rather pure distillation of the Massive sound. Musically, it is built around an iconic beat, and a sample of the first sections of Beninois composer Wally Badarou’s instrumental ‘Mambo’ from 1984. It’s all atmospheric washes of keys and airy piano fills over a loping, expressive puercussion.” IB-54
“Hymn of the Big Wheel”
“By the time Blue Lines comes to a close with the layered orchestrations of Hymn of the Big Wheel, it’s clear Moby, Fatboy Slim, Portishead and Radiohead owe Massive Attack a debt of gratitude.” RV “It isn’t just a visionary soul record; it’s also a better slow-sex album than any other we can name.” VB
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