#MASSIVE ATTACK FULL#

Curtis’s highbrow-vapourwave stylings are evident here, in the deft use of archival footage and ALLCAPS declamations about geopolitics and global surveillance.Ĭurtis and Massive Attack collaborated previously, in 2013, for an integrated multichannel/audio experience in Manchester and New York. One animation from the current tour depicts a clunky, digital-flight-simulator view of a plane cruising ominously towards skyscrapers. There, I argued that, while that record was in many ways the group’s funkiest and most ground-breaking, Mezzanine, in all of its cinematic glory, was a definite work of art that was a harbinger of the darker human tragedy of 9/11 that was lurking around the corner. I wrote a book recently, for Bloomsbury’s ‘33 1/ 3’ series, about Massive Attack’s 1991 debut, Blue Lines. Massive Attack, Mezzanine, 1998, record cover. Unlike earlier records, which relied heavily on samples and synthesizers, Mezzanine marked a foray into subtle instrumentation and lyrics evoking a claustrophobic urban miasma. The album opener, ‘Angel’, was used to harrowing effect in the film Snatch (2000) as itinerant boxer Mickey O’Neil’s (Brad Pitt) mother’s caravan was burned to the ground. It remains a shadowy noir built on meandering sitars, buzzsaw guitars, throbbing sub-bass and ethereal lyrics meant to create tension that builds like a fever. In the context of such sentimental fare, we are reminded, Mezzanine hit listeners like a ton of bricks. Simpler times, quainter times: these are all referenced in early frames of Massive Attack’s precision lighting and video programme – which Robert Del Naja made in close collaboration with British artist Adam Curtis – and in cheeky pre-show music that included anodyne gems such as Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ (1998) and Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’ (1997). 1998 was the high-water mark of a frothy neoliberal fantasy that seemed within reach. Also: the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, still caroused in the palaces of Baghdad US president Bill Clinton weathered impeachment and a young artist named Britney Spears released a song called ‘Baby One More Time’. New Labour and the guitar-strumming UK prime minister, Tony Blair, were riding high the Eurozone grew increasingly interlinked and millions logged on to a new-fangled service called AOL.

Mezzanine was released in April of 1998, itself a year emblematic of an ebullient ’90s-era zeitgeist. Mezzanine XXI, as the tightly choreographed show was titled, marked the 21st anniversary of the eponymous record, which Massive Attack played in its entirety – albeit re-sequenced. For now.Massive Attack, the Bristol-based collective whose dubbed-out hip-hop permeated the culture of the 1990s, launched a European and US tour this year, which culminated last week at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Bathed in the warm glow of light, the audience can finally breathe again. The Scottish singer's understated beautiful voice is like the morning sun glinting through the blinds as the comedown eases off. After a night filled with Massive Attack's trademark sense of paranoia, creeping dread and late night alienation, it marks a sudden shift in tempo. The highlight is undoubtedly Teardrop, sung live in Fraser's ethereal tones for the first time in over a decade. The most bizarre inclusion comes in the form of a reworked portion of the late Avicii's Levels – Am I actually hearing this?, I wonder aloud – while Group Four proves a confident closing number as it reaches a dizzying crescendo of sound and fury. Some of the audience may not have liked the inclusion of songs sampled on the album at the expense of Massive Attack’s own tracks, but this group has always been about creating genre-defying, expectation-busting soundscapes, and here they’ve turned their iconic album inside out and made a new one. It boasts the light and shade the visuals arguably lack, as the soundtrack moves from post punk numbers such as the Bauhaus track Bela Lugosi's Dead and Rockwrok by Ultravox to the elegiac beauty of Fraser's voice on Black Milk and a searing cover of Pete Seeger's Where Have All The Flowers Gone. However the musical journey is filled with greater nuance. It's also one that at times risks being overly preachy: throughout, onscreen text delivers messages such as 'as the decade went on, machines began collecting memories' and 'outside the pleasure dome the endless wars continued' alongside footage of the Twin Towers, Trump, Michael Jackson and JonBenét Ramsey. Mezzanine XX1 is a show that presents its own esoteric, nonlinear version of recent history.

#MASSIVE ATTACK FULL#

Backed by a full band, the Bristol born duo then launch into Risingson itself, nightmarish and claustrophobic.

Massive attack