Massive Attack

Massive Attack hails from Bristol, and has roots that stretch back to the early 1980s. The Wild Bunch was the most successful “sound system” – or DJ collective – in Bristol, playing an innovative collection of hip hop, soul, reggae, and dance records. Their sets became so popular that they reportedly killed the live music scene in Bristol for a couple of years, as everybody in town clamored to get into one of their parties. After The Wild Bunch broke up, the group splintered into a few concerns, including Soul II Soul, masterminded by Nellee Hooper, and Massive Attack, which began to make their own music influenced by the different strains they played as DJs.

Their first full album, Blue Lines, was a surprisingly well-crafted album, featuring many sophisticated songs. Blue Lines didn’t exactly blow up worldwide, but it did get the group noticed by other musicians, who then went on to refine and capitalize on their innovations – musicians such as Portishead, Tricky, Beth Orton, and the Sneaker Pimps all owe their sound to the slow, soulful montages of Massive Attack.

Their second album, Protection, grabbed wider public attention and found them refining their mix of sleepy beats, soulful crooning, and inventive sampling. It almost single handedly set the stage for “trip hop”, a slowed down version of hip hop that features atmospheric samples and unusual textures. They weren’t really the first ones there – Barry Adamson, among others, had been exploring the interface of noir soundtracks and hip hop for quite awhile before Protection hit – but Massive Attack brought the noir into the light and gave it widespread exposure. As good as that album is, and it is, the remix of it perpetrated by The Mad Professor (called No Protection) is something else entirely. Taking the tenants of dub remixing to heart, Mad Professor completely rearranges the original tracks to stunning effect. Most of the finished products bear scant resemblance to the originals, and are much more exciting and experimental than Massive Attack was allowing themselves to be. True, it wasn’t as commercially accessible or successful as Protection, but that just offers further proof of its superior nature.

By their third album, Mezzanine, Massive Attack had settled down into a polished but predictable formula. Slow, mind-crushing beats propping up thick, syrupy slabs of sound and a sprinkling of soulful crooning or murmured rapping on top. For Mezzanine, Massive Attack tapped two of modern music’s best chanteuses to help out on a couple of tracks – Everything But the Girl’s Tracey Thorn and Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser both contribute their own trademarked brand of singing to Massive’s gloopy grooves. Dark and menacing, Mezzanine festers and bubbles like some dank, underground pool of black water, fed by springs that reach all the way down to hell’s dark dominion. This track is from that album, and showcases the murky, threatening Massive sound perfectly. Guitars, vocals, rhythms, and mysterious textures stumble into each other and lurch forward, covered in molasses. This is the sound of trip hop, and while others may have taken it further, these were (almost) the originators, the creators of the whole noir-soaked northern England dub-soul-rare groove scene. Massive.