21 years after the release of Mezzanine, Massive Attack is taking the album back on tour. The band from Bristol transcended itself in 1998 with the album that smothered the subgenre that it had created in the cradle.
"It has been suggested that the tracks' bass drum rhythm lowers your blood pressure and has a calming effect because it sounds like a beating heart."
Mezzanine by Massive Attack: Trip hop's final convulsion
Also read: Massive Attack geeft clubconcert in AB
In 1991, Massive Attack wrote the blueprint for trip hop with Blue lines, but by the end of the last millennium, the genre had been milked for all it was worth and “made so loungy” that even its pioneers took to their heels. Former band member Tricky had sought refuge in a solo career with a more aggressive tone, and Portishead’s anxious pace was also driving up the intensity. All that remained was for the founding fathers of the Bristol sound to sign the death sentence.
They did so with brio on Mezzanine, a record that was driven by paranoia and packed with tracks about boredom, oppression, and loss. Trip hop’s final convulsion was a dark masterpiece brimming with pre-millennium tension that has lost none of its power and relevance over the past twenty years.
Words of Mourning
The band was no longer a collective and the members’ creative visions came into increasing conflict. Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles questioned the change of direction, away from urban soul and towards a darker new wave samples-based sound, which was especially what Robert “3D” Del Naja wanted to explore. They landed somewhere between the two, and all the arguing would eventually turn out in their favour because it allowed space for the guest vocalists to shine.
Reggae singer Horace Andy was in top form, but more than anything, it was the ethereal vocals of former Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser that would have a lasting effect on our collective consciousness. “Teardrop on the fire / Fearless on my breath”: words of mourning drifted somewhere between melancholy and claustrophobia to a sensitive harpsichord.
It has been suggested that the tracks’ bass drum rhythm lowers your blood pressure and has a calming effect precisely because it sounds like a beating heart.
Her performance was gut-wrenching. It was only much later that we found out that she had just discovered that singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, whom she had known well, had drowned. It has been suggested that the tracks’ bass drum rhythm lowers your blood pressure and has a calming effect precisely because it sounds like a beating heart. Might that be the reason why the track was the opening tune of the American hospital series House M.D. for a full decade?
Nostalgia nightmare
How lucky it was that the other band members vetoed Vowles’s original plan to ask Madonna to sing it. Incidentally, he was to leave the group shortly after the release and will not be joining the remaining members on the upcoming tour. Fraser will, and that is significant because they have not performed together since 2013.
Del Naja describes their new show as their “own personalized nostalgia nightmare head trip.” But for most of their fans it has become very clear that much more than a zeitgeist, Mezzanine expressed the idea of having lost the way, something that characterizes most post-genres and something that continues to resonate profoundly in today’s world.
> Massive Attack: MezzanineXXI
31/1, 20.00, Paleis/Paleis 12
Read more about: Brussel, Muziek, massive attack, mezzanine
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