Hi, everyone. Coldthony Daytano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a classic review of the Massive Attack album, Mezzanine.

Yes, here we have a classic review of the legendary UK music outfit, Massive Attack, and their third and most refined, but also conflicted album, Mezzanine. Now, to start this one, we first have to go back because this record arrives about 10 years after Massive Attack's original formation in 1988. Their full and complete history in music goes back even further than that. Originally, the group was a four-piece that was essentially reformed out of a sound system collective. So when Massive Attack was actually founded, they were collectively bringing multiple years of DJ and production experience.

Robert 3D Del Naja, Tricky, Andrew Vowels, as well as Grant Marshall were all semi veterans of the Bristol music scene at that point. You can really hear the group's collective eclectic music knowledge all coming together on their debut record, Blue Lines. That record dropped in 1991, and it was very much this chill, subtle combination of jazz and neo-soul, as well as hip hop and dub, that was very much geared toward the dance scene at the time. The specific recipe of those genre combinations really depended on the track you were listening to or the vocal guest on it, as this album does feature the talents of reggae legend Horace Andy, as well as Neneh Cherry, who would go on to be quite the UK music legend. Also Sharon Nelson.

Now, I should mention that Massive Attack, genre-wise, is often categorized as trip top, which when you dig into it, is a genre that just encompasses so much, and there's such a wide variety of sounds and vibes and songwriting approaches between its key artists, be it Portishead or Massive Attack here or Unkle. But it's still a musical movement that has a very distinct vibe to it, as well as a measurable cultural impact, be it on the UK electronic music scene more broadly, through more current indie artists such as The xx. There were some big trip hop influences coming through on that recent Chelsea Wolf record that I went gaga for. Not to mention maybe Massive Attack's most successful progeny, Gorrilaz. (Remember, the lead singer of that group is named 2D, which is not so subtle of a Massive Attack nod there. I mean, Massive Attack and Damon Albarn have actually worked on music together, too. So the influence, the connection there is not exactly a secret.)

But anyway, the sound and aesthetics of Massive Attack's debut were most definitely a little dry and very simplistic. But the genre combinations, the musical style, and the great song ideas were most certainly there. On Massive Attack's following 1994 sophomore album, Protection, they definitely start to finetune things and begin to throw in more effects and texture. But this continued exploration of sound as well as genre and Massive Attack's lopsided shifting creative hierarchy would bring the group to a few impasses.

Looking for more independence and creative control, Tricky would pretty much cut himself off from the group and pursue more of a solo career in which he himself would drop a couple of great trip hop classics. And shortly after the release of Mezzanine, Andrew Vowles, according to a 2008 Guardian interview, would pretty much leave the group due to personal and creative friction intentions. Even though Grant Marshall would stick around, even he himself essentially took a Massive Attack break in the early 2000s for a period of several years.

So obviously, Massive Attack is still operational today and putting out stuff here and there. They have even worked with Tricky again recently. But the group would not be as legendary or as influential as they are today without this otherworldly special album that almost brought them to the brink.

Now, the first track on this thing is the song "Angel", which I think is a fantastic opener for this record because in many ways. It states where exactly the band is creatively. It puts out there right at the forefront what is going to make this record different from any other massive attack release. But also in some ways, it's like you're listening to the same old group still especially given that vocally, we have the appearance of Horace Andy once again. We also have lots of slow, steady, meditative beats on the production side, some dub reggae-influenced effects, too.

But that's where the similarities to past material ends, because beyond that, you just have this deep, heavy, just subterranean bass, creepy percussion touches, as well as some droning guitar layers, too. The track is just always progressively building like this dark, intense, psyched idyllic journey. When Horace Andy sings,
"You are my angel, come from way above," it doesn't sound like he's just making a statement of romantic intent. It's like he's singing about a being from another dimension. The aesthetics of this track are gritty, they're noisy, they're industrially tinged. It's definitely speaking to something darker and weirder than the music that came out of the dance scenes that Massive Attack originally cut their teeth in.

In that, I feel like the group landed on a lot of very predictive song ideas and sounds. "Rising Sun", for example, following this, is essentially the first Gorillaz song. I'm not even going to say anything else about it. You just have to listen to it and you will know exactly what I'm saying.

But following this, "Teardrop" is one of the group's biggest singles of all time, and it's not hard to see why. It features a killer vocal performance from Cocteau Twins vocalist Elizabeth Fraser, which is presented in this refreshingly intimate way, considering the amount of layers and studio trickery that typically go into any given Twins album. There's something to the music and production on this track that are deceptively simple, but still the effect of it is emotionally powerful. For me personally, nostalgic as well, as the very chill head nodding beats and the slow dramatic piano chords feel like many a movie and television music piece that would be released past this point, really throughout the 2000s.

If you were at all familiar with this era of poignant, original television and film music, you're going to recognize right away that Massive Attack is really penning the DNA for all of that stuff right here. In fact, for years, this song was the original opening theme for the popular television series House.

After this, we have the song "Inertia Creeps", which is a personal favorite of mine. We have lots of whispery spoken word vocals, very dark, exotic percussion, some distant desert guitar leads that feel like a religious experience or at the very least reaching higher mental plane. There's something very cartoony and animated about it despite it being so low key, which I mean in a positive sense, of course, because the sounds of this track are just so tasty and evocative. It has a real sense of place. It's like sand in your toes, it's wind in your face, it's multi-colored skies while you are just going out of your mind because of how dark and odd the music is.

The track "Exchange" is a really cool breather and instrumental centerpiece for the record, but it is by no means a forgettable interlude. We have some slow meditative rap beats on this thing, which is then wrapped in all of these woozy textured effects and sample chops. It's a track that honestly gives many cuts from DJ Shadow's Entroducing a run for their money.

The eerie vibes on Mezzanine creep back in with "Dissolved Girl", which features vocals from Sarah Jay Hawley. I love how her performance on this track is so understated and breathy and yet dynamic and expressive. It's not just the notes that she's hitting, but how emotive her singing is. I love how in the span of a verse, she goes from sounding unnerving to sultry just before the production bursts into full industrial rock mode with lots of burnt-out riffs, stuttering tones soaked in delay, and these sampled key chops. I actually enjoy the ending of this track, too, despite it trailing off into nowhere. It leaves the track with a certain uncertainty that I think the music pulls a lot of power from.

The great Horace Andy comes back on the track "Man Next Door", this time for a much more straightforward but still quite moody reggae and rock mix. It's not quite as heavy or as intense as the intro track on the album, but that is easily made up for with how catchy many of the vocal refrain in guitar work is.

"Black Milk" is another Elizabeth Fraser cut. Tracks like this, again, are just proof of how predictive Massive Attack's music and sound were. This song sounds like multiple cuts from the Succession soundtrack, of all things, between the pretty glistening cavernous pianos, hypnotic bass, and head nodding beats, which are quite heavy. Of course, Elizabeth's beckoning vocals are just the cherry on top of all of that.

The final moments on the album from here are some of the strongest, too. 3d and Daddy G trade some deadpan bars on the title track of the record, which in some pockets reads like a surreal ode to the late night party scene. But in terms of its musical vibe, it's like if Aphex Twin were trying to soundtrack a murder mystery with an interestingly funky switch up in the second half. I love how this track just operates in this liminal space between sounding relaxed but also totally on edge.

There's a similar combination of emotions going on on the following track, "Group Four", which is the lengthiest song on the album, spanning past eight minutes. Elizabeth Fraser smashes it once again. 3d ties his own vocals in here and there, too. And musically, we're getting a lot of touches of jazz and soul. Jazz fusion, specifically. The keys feel like something off of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew. Meanwhile, that extra run time is used to create a really epic finish. We have a tension-building bridge that explodes into a riffy finish with Fraser's ghostly vocals just swimming in the haze of guitars and beats.

And for the closing track, we come back to "Exchange", but in parentheses. Horace Andy returns on vocals, too. What we essentially get on this track is a very vibey, positive, spaced-out outro with filtered beats and loops. It's a very blissful ending to the record, a meditation and motif. It's really elevator music-esque, which I mean in a complementary way, because if this is, in fact, elevator music, we are taking an elevator to heaven. So even if it is off the cuff and simple on the musical and the structure side, the production details still sound incredible.

And that, in a nutshell, is Mezzanine, an often-copied but still unique and boundary-pushing album that, genre-wise, is really difficult to categorize. But despite that difficulty, this record enjoys more cultural influence and impact than most, even some of the biggest pop stars of today, really, which is why you should spend some time listening to it if you have, if you haven't, and there we go.

Anthony Fantano. Massive Attack. Mezzanine. Forever.