Massive Attack - Mezzanine POLL

I love 'Dissolved Girl' a lot but 'Risingson' was such a big song for me in summer 1997 so I'll go with that, still sounds great of course. I'd forgotten this album was frontloaded with all the singles.

I always assumed the artwork for Los Angeles by Flying Lotus was done by the same person/people as this but apparently not. Very similar though!

No one knows why

Because all the other members of the band left and it became essentially a 3D solo project for him to indulge his goth instincts.

Mezzanine is very goth and very obviously 3D's record but the old alchemy is still there - Mezzanine and Group Four in particular sound like multiple different voices pulling apart while at the same time trying to construct something magnificent, remotely, from cranes. They're astonishing pieces of music.

Went with the coiled-spring intensity of Inertia Creeps in the end but I could have gone of any one of three or four here.

prefer to think of the second half of the album as dubby introspective rumble which most days for me is preferable to singley funtimes, "Man Next Door" is sort of a bridge here, "pop" songform gradually nodding off into something darker and earthier and more insular

but with a different sound palette i'd probably be like "yeah this is total gothdom"

"Group Four" could go on the rooms with many doors thread, so many interesting shifts that really build the momentum.

I haven't listened to it in ages but I remember really liking the first tune on 100th Window, though the rest of the album less so.

risingson

Yeah, Futureproof is the opening song on 100th Window and is a pretty magnificent, subdued crawl. Definitely my favourite off that record.

Marcello wrote a lovely review of 100th Window at the time that I wish I could find.

post-Mezzanine Massive Attack isn't without its moments, but they're too few and not standouts

I keep forgetting to put all the Mezzanine-era Mad Professor remixes together. There was at least one that was posted online as a one-off that wasn't on a single, making the total count nearly half the album, iirc? A full album dub ala No Protection would have been great

Marcello wrote a lovely review of 100th Window at the time that I wish I could find.

Do you mean this one?

I'm almost certainly going to go with a Liz track.

Were the rumors about Mushroom writing Teardrop on his own and threatening to give it to Madonna and one of the group's producers reconstructing it from memory true?

yes! thanks, m!

xpost

great songs on 100th Window include:

"Future Proof"
"When Your Soul Sings"
"Special Cases"
"Butterfly Caught"
"Small Time Shot Away"

post-Mezzanine Massive Attack isn't without its moments, but they're too few and not standouts

Heliogoland is great top to bottom, btw

</massiveattackfanboy>

we know, D. we know.

Gonna vote for Angel, because that slow build is so great.

magnificent album, dark & powerful. the first four songs plus "man next door" - which are towering above the rest in terms of urgency & originality - have got something deep & tribal about it, like a voodoo cult. this is music i like to listen to down in the humid cellar. it's weird, i was 100% sure this cxame out on a rainy & cold november day but in fact it was released april, 28th, how memories can be deceiving. voted for teardrop, one of the last great moments of liz fraser, i don't watch tv series. i didn't find "group for" on my ipod, i must have deleted it, or was it never on my cd, i don't remember, anyways liz fraser has another fine moment there, her voice is more fully built, more complete than her usual ethereal fairy shtick.

Nice to see a lot of tracks getting love here (the Horace Andy stuff kills), but are people truly tired of Teardrop or just pretending it's not one of the most stunning pieces of music of the past fifteen years?

ppl are truly tired of it because it was used in the US as the opening theme to "House"

Obv wrote that before I saw Alex' praise

I think online streaming versions of House (on Hulu?) lacked the licensing of the broadcast one and used the same music as the UK opening. Very disorienting at first, but pleasing in that it didn't hammer the instrumental part of Teardrop every time.

I still love Teardrop, always will, but it has never been the song I'd place as the best on this album. There are songs in here that do more things in less time and the thing I love the most about Mezzanine is its use of thick basslines, Teardrop doesn't have one.

black milk is a personal favorite but the end-of-the-world swans like thing in group four is so classic.

reunion album please.

voted 'inertia creeps' over 'group four'. so strange to see lex referring to this as such a winter album cuz it (and most triphop tbh) has always played as very much a summer album to me. not in that summery poppy way like the avalanches or free design or whatever but in the way the heat is unrelenting and engulfing and suffocating almost, that weary tension in the air.

OTM

the last time i listened to this album was while driving through the desert at night (this summer)

my fav is "dissolved girl"

"Teardrop" is not the House theme in the UK? Weird.

This was my 'exercise' album a decade or so ago so I always relate it to sweat. Never thought of it as cold.

late night album, tired tension, release, and paranoia imo

The end of Group Four was one of my absolute favorite bits of music for a while.

This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT_ZoiR3vw0

This is really difficult. I love the brooding bassline building up in Angel. Teardrop is great. Group Four is menacing and desperate. Risingson has that brilliant "toylike people make me boylike" verse. One of those four.

Looks like the title track is gonna lose out here. Which doesn't surprise me - a great tune hiding in the shadow of the track it precedes and the track it sounds like ("Group Four" and "Risingson" respectively).

After watching too many seasons of House, I know my vote won't be for "Teardrop".

The sad thing is I used to really love this song, but now it annoys because of House.

all these half votes
x-post

This makes me glad I've ever seen house, as a world where teardrop is diminished would suck hard

"never" that is

Never seen House either. Only instances I recall right now of songs off this album being used in films are:

Dissolved Girl - The Jackal, Matrix
Angel - Snatch, π/Pi :order of chaos
Inertia Creeps - Collateral

I'm sure there's many more. Wikipedia has a list but I'm sure it's missing half of them (Collateral and Pi are missing per example). There were a couple of years were it felt like library music for Hollywood producers to choose from. I got afraid it would kill the joys of this album.

Here's imdb's list. More complete:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1039315/

I don't see Collateral's use of Inertia Creeps in there. I was almost certain it played in a bar scene. I must be mixing it with something else.

In other things, for a long long time I misheard 'Man Next Door' lyrics as:

He gets in so late at night
Always a fuzzing fart

Which sucks because the song has one of my favorite basslines in the album but the lyrics were stupid to me... kept thinking the song was, literally, about an old man farting so loud that he kept his neighbors awake and while I found it kind of funny it seemed completely inappropriate and out of place with the rest of the album.

I swear Horace Andy pronounces 'Fight' as 'Fart'.

Always heard it as "always a fussy fart", like some old grandpa who returns from his card game at 11pm and starts demanding someone prepare him dinner and clean up the mess in the bathroom.

Most common TV usage here is as background mood music for investigative journalism pieces on our govt-owed broadcaster re the decline of some rare type of coral or the perils of low doc lending.

To think that I lay next to you
Wasting time when I could do
A simple job in strip lights

This has always struck me as one of the most quietly desperate lyrics ever written.

Side B trumps side A in much the same whay as on 'Disintegration' and for the same reason I find itd ifficult to single out a track from teh 2nd half - anyway Black Milk or title track for me.

I voted Angel, but giving it a second listen Group Four is the one that I wanted to replay the most.

Dissolved Girl for me, but Black Milk's not far behind. It's one of the few albums I will still comfortably listen to all the way through.

"Man Next Door" is maybe the most striking and ominous re-combination of the various elements they are playing with - reggae, electronica, industrial, and rock.
I wasn't expecting this record fit in with the Dr. John I was listening to right beforehand, it must be a bassline thing.

xp It's OK but I've just never found it as interesting or inspiring as most of the other tracks

Actually maybe a better reason for that is that it's pretty much just 3D without much input from any others and his vocals (tho not necessarily the lyrics) do tend to be the least good aspect of most MA tracks he takes the lead on.

agreed, but the track is GARGANTUAN

"Man Next Door" and "Angel" were my favorite songs on first contact.

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, July 11, 2023

same. still are.

Yeah, 'Man Next Door' is my favourite Mezzanine track too, even though I'm often tempted to sing the words of 'Driving in my Car' by Madness to the tune when it comes on.

I need more albums with this goth dub vibe in my life.

“Doom doom do do do doom doom (click$)”

goth dub vibe

Funny description. A high-school classmate to whom I gave Mezzanine to copy to CD-R, back when only an elite few owned a CD burner, gave me the disc back the next day and said "You listen to weird industrial shit". That has stuck in my mind as one way to describe the album’s sound.

wish i'd seen the tour, this is fantastic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGCk-_cz00U

Goth dub is my favorite genre that never fully crystallized (along with Massive Attack/Tricky we have: "She's in Parties", New Order's cover of "Turn the Heater On", this version of "Red Over White": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoH8GLoXBMQ)

Goth Dub is a great description for most of it.

It’s a pretty unique album in its atmosphere, not even Massive Attack themselves were able to replicate it afterwards but some cuts from heligoland and the rituak spirit ep come close.

I guess it depends on what aspect of mezzanine you like. Tricky’s maxinquaye, nearly god and pmt kind of have the sort of feverish sensuality, Burial has the same kind of energy, Recoil’s liquid the dark industrial vibe, how to destroy angels’ welcome oblivion has some very “mezzanine” inspired soundscapes too…

Nothing gets close to the original one.

wish i'd seen the tour

Really was remarkable.

I've found some slower paced dub techno occasionally has a similar vibe (monolake, yagya, etc) but usually doesn't have the vocals, which really add true menace to the proceedings

It’s a pretty unique album in its atmosphere, not even Massive Attack themselves were able to replicate it afterwards

I always remember 100th Window as Mezzanine redone to less effect and with a mediocre female vocalist. Am I misremembering? I guess I have to relisten to that, though the disappointment of twenty years ago doesn’t make that an exciting prospect.

I felt the same way. Never cared for 100th Window after listening to Mezzanine a billion times. It was just more of the same but not as good.

The Sinead tracks on 100th Window don't really play to her strengths compared to Fraser's on Mezzanine but What Your Soul Sings is still stellar, Special Cases good, A Prayer For England is..also there.

but yes Melomane you misremember :)

100th window has some great moments but it’s pretty much a Robert Del Naja solo album. Without Daddy G and Mushroom it becomes clear what his production strengths are but he’s missing a lot of the dub and hip hop expertise they brought to the table. It’s a very claustrophobic and cold record that’s nowhere as enjoyable as Mezzanine.

100th Window was definitely in a weird transition phase and I feel like it's more a 3d/Neil Davidge work. They did a couple movie soundtracks around the same time.

There was a track or two that popped up on the internet in the Mezzanine/100th Window interregnum when 3d was working with Lupine Howl (former Spiritualized members) that were more droney, swirling guitar stuff as you might expect. That kind of got shelved/canned, we get 100th Window, and imo it's kind of a mixed bag until Heligoland. Losing both Mushroom and Daddy G kind of set the whole project adrift for a bit

Heligoland is better mainly because Daddy G is back. Iirc 3D and him worked on their demo tracks separately and the best songs imho are those that Daddy G brought to the table and which have a closer DNA to Mezzanine (Paradise Circus, Girl I Love You)

Saturday Come Slow is also a Daddy G contribution and also one of the best songs in there.

Just like with how Mushroom is staying alive, I wonder how Daddy G could afford to take 12 years off from Massive Attack. By the early millennium, were royalties from “Unfinished Sympathy”, “Inertia Creeps” or “Teardrop” enough to live on?

Mushroom is the main writer of “teardrop” so I’m guessing he has received plenty of big checks through licensing for tv/movies/compilations for that one alone.

Daddy G probably also gets a lot of money through licensing of MA’s songs and even when he hasn’t been around for the 100th window or Ritual Spirit studio sessions he was usually accompanying 3D on tour.

3D probably the one who has the most money thanks to his Banksy side gig.

Also not sure about “unfinished sympathy” but Teardrop was used as the main theme for the Dr. House series which was very successful and went on for 8 seasons so I’m guessing the check for that one would have been pretty good.

“Inertia Creeps” has been used a lot too but iirc the Massive Attack track that has been licensed the most is “Angel”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_(Massive_Attack_song)

Hearing the “hunger mix” and the Massive Attack live cover of Bela Lugosi’s Dead has made it click how influential Bauhaus’ goth dub pieces were to Mezzanine.

I think 100th Window is Mezzanine's equal. It's a different chill for a different time - maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember 2003 but not 1998 I don't know. But Special Cases (via a compilation or two) was known to be there during impressionable nighttime car rides so it has an instant evocativeness that pulls the rest of the album with it. Basically ineffable attachment I have to the album and its 'context' (my version).

I think the glacial stasis of 100th Wondow is a strength, not a weakness

otm

3D probably the one who has the most money thanks to his Banksy side gig.

I haven’t seen much online speculation about this in the last months, but I wonder if that is because everyone has already concluded that this is the case.

My theory is that Banksy is not a single person. There’s probably three or four people working together as Banksy. Robert might be one of them.

Banksy is a collective formed by Robert Del Naja, Robin Gunningham and Prince Harry.

yeah it must take a whole committee to create those genius works

Harry on his own, i'll buy that