M a s s i v e A t t a c k
MEZZANINE
(1998)
(http://www.musicmatic.de/M/Massive1a.jpg) (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=33C6CHXY)
"The coolest song Iīve ever heard", was a Rolling Stones journalistīs initial reaction to the albumīs stand-out cut "Teardrop". "A taste of the future of pop music" is the description youīll find on amazon.com (http://amazon.com), and among trip-hop fans, the album is worshipped as part of the "holy trinity" of the genre. It is safe to say that "Mezzanine" is both a critically acclaimed and widely popular album.
In 1991, before bands like Portishead or Morcheeba even existed, Massive Attack, formed by members of the Wild Bunch Sound System, a crew of MCīs and DJīs organizing parties in their home town Bristol, popped up in the music scene with an album called "Blue Lines". The CD compiling their innovative blend of jazz, funk, soul and dub samples was labelled a masterpiece instantly - the band, at that time, was completly unknown to the vast majority of the British music scene. So was their sound. Yet it didnīt take the music industry long to coin a new term for the music, referring both to its atmospheric and slightly psychedelic sonic landscapes and the roots and technique of its sampling: trip-hop.
While other artists like Portishead or Tricky followed the bandīs footsteps during the next few years, turning trip-hop into a more and more desillusionized and depressive sound, Massive Attack were having a hard time trying to live up to their debutīs success. It was in 1998, the music style already being on the brink of becoming worn out, that they came back with their most gloomy and most hardly acessible record. "Mezzanine" is no more just a potpourri of well-known to exotic samples, but a dark trip through the sonic landscape of Bristol, on which melancholy is the happiest feeling youīll be confronted with.
From the subliminally menacing start of the opener "Angel" to the distorted guitars and the seemingly nervous rapping on "Risingson" to the threatening voice on "Inertia Creeps" and beyond, "Mezzanine" is chock full of moments and strangely evocative sonic details that might give you the chills. Itīs hard to forget the nightmarishly sung "dream on" on "Risingson" or not let the dismal atmosphere on at least half of the album get to you. The title track and the long "Group Four" might be the most impressive examples of why this album might indeed have contributed considerably to providing the foundations for a lot of what was - and still is - to come in electronic pop music; the eight-minute epic coming in right before the close-out is a brillantly weird, psychedelically dark piece of progressive rock bordering techno, but never deteriorating into anything that might become redundant after a few listens - actually, a whole lot of listening is needed to get a good view of the picture drawn by the three-man group and their guest appearances and to feel the albums moody, latently depressive atmosphere.
While the album as a whole may come in as almost violently dark, some tracks come closer to creating the feeling of a melancholic rainy day than of an absolutely hopeless situation. "Black Milk" wonīt get your funky party started, but it is, in comparison, not as viciously insane and loopy as many other tracks on the album. "Teardrop" is the song that remains many peopleīs favorite and one of the most skillful compositions in trip-hop up to this day. It is, in a way, quite simple, but the way Cocteau Twins guest star Elizabeth Fraser lays down her high, yet soothing vocals over the trackīs slowly developping melodic background, intertwining with its lazy drum pattern and occasional low-pitch samples, will impress anybody who would ever listen to trip-hop. The coolest song ever? Maybe. However, this is one of the coolest albums ever made.