14th September 1998 - Avalon Ballroom, Boston, USA
Support from Lewis Parker
Angel
Risingson
Man Next Door
Day Dreaming
Teardrop
Karmacoma
Hymn Of The Big Wheel
Euro Zero Zero
Spying Glass
Mezzanine
One Love
Safe From Harm
Heat Miser
Inertia Creeps
Unfinished Sympathy
Group Four
Entering Massive Attack's
darkly lustrous universe is a little like being catapulted through strange but
welcoming worlds of wonder -- an endless solar system of sound and texture that
embraces the soul and brushes the brain stem. Such was the case Monday evening
during a thrilling, sold-out performance that was as satisfying as it was ambitious.
The Bristol-based collective -- which on stage expanded to between six and nine
musicians, programmers, and singers at any given time -- rendered laughably
moot the question of whether electronic-based music can draw and hold an audience
in a concert format. Then again, Massive Attack -- whose core members include
DJ/vocalists Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall and DJ Andrew Vowles -- aren't
your garden-variety techno act.
Commonly tagged as perhaps the progenitors of trip-hop (a term they, of course,
reject as silly), the cut-and-paste collective really does embody everything
that the term implies, and so much more. Theirs is an omnivorous sonic arena
where post-modern psychedelia intermingles with house, hip-hop, dub reggae and
looped samples of Kate Bush and Lou Reed. What comes out the other end is a
kind of cosmic soul -- a boldly adventurous mix of stealth, precision, and euphoria.
They may not speak to each other much these days (the three principals have
publicly acknowledged fraying inter-band relations), but they certainly had
no trouble communicating on stage at Avalon, where their music roared and throbbed
with intuitive, knowing power.
An ominous blare of droning sirens and the distant thunder of Winston Blissett's bass slowly revealed themselves as belonging to "Angel," the first track from Mezzanine, Massive Attack's latest album (and their first in five years). With frequent collaborator Horace Andy's weirdly keening vocal floating high above the rumbling turmoil below, the song was an ideal mood-setting device -- and perfectly in keeping with Massive Attack's penchant for dramatic contrast. From there, the outfit moved with deadly grace into "Risingson" and "Man Next Door" -- both also from the new disc -- before settling into a ravishing reading of "Daydreaming" from the outfit's standard-settling 1991 debut, Blue Lines. That tune and the next, "Teardrop," were lush showcases for singer Deborah Miller, whose swooning melodic caress supplied a warm counterpoint to the strafing bursts of rhythm dispatched by ex-Blue Aeroplanes guitarist Angelo Bruschini.
What Massive Attack's performance
demonstrated more than anything, though, was how much of a difference seven
years can make, especially in a hybrid genre that's constantly evolving and
re-defining itself. Over the course of three albums, Del Naja, Marshall and
Vowles have strayed far from the languid grooves that characterized their earlier
work and embarked on a search of darker, deeper -- and more corrosive -- textures.
One only had to listen as the band offered up the reggae-fied synth-bop-and-skip
of '91's "Hymn of the Big Wheel" and then later shifted into the narcotic
desolation of "Mezzanine" to realize that Massive Attack's world has
darkened considerably over the course of a decade -- and that, oddly enough,
it's all the more dazzling for it.
JONATHAN PERRY