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Rating: Trip-hop is dead! Long live trip-hop!
It's with this shout that we could summarize the splendid collection by Massive Attack, those who probably invented trip-hop, not by forming a band, but rather a laboratory of sounds and artists who expressed their qualities at their best by collaborating on this project.
In the '90s when talking about this genre, it meant everything originating from the city of Bristol and surroundings, and indeed Massive Attack, Tricky, and Portishead exclusively represented almost everything moving in the dub and trip-hop area.
Today, with Tricky releasing an album every 3-4 years with shifts increasingly towards pop, Portishead announcing a new album for at least 5 years, and Massive Attack reduced to just Robert Del Naja, a.k.a. 3D, who has produced only one honest yet deeply felt album in the new century, it's just the right moment for a release like this, to perhaps give new vigor to the genre itself, which can still boast artists of caliber (Kid Loco, DJ Shadow, the great Kruder & Dorfmeister...), but certainly not the same verve as the Bristol Sound.
Alternating are tracks from "Blue Lines" (1991) where the genre was conceived and the cells began to reproduce, still influenced by a certain Balearic sound that would be completely abandoned in the dark dubs of "Protection" (1994), reaching that "Mezzanine" (1998) representing (along with "Ok Computer" by Radiohead, different field, but same devastating impact) the keystone of the decade that was coming to an end and the right opening for the 21st century that was about to begin, with peaks of sensual groove so high that they will rarely be reached again. Of course, there are also some tracks from "100th Window" (2003) which, as mentioned before, was perhaps an excessively underrated album, where 3D possibly overdoes it a bit too much in self-celebration of himself and the group which now only he represents, a difficult task after the glories of the mentioned "Mezzanine" and that still contains some remarkable tracks.
There is also a new track, "Live With Me", which adds nothing new to the conversation, in perfect Massive Attack style, embellished as usual by an exceptional vocalist, which for the occasion is Terry Callier, alongside all the great voices that have, over the years, in solitary beauty or paired with 3D's dub voice, enriched the tracks of the albums mentioned (Tricky, Tracey Thorn, Elizabeth Fraser, Sinead O'Connor... just to mention the most known to the general public).
This is an album suitable for those who weren't there or were asleep in the '90s and can land in a way we could define as "massive" on the planet of Our guys, but also for those who know every single note of this group's four albums, to savor in one go the dark and gloomy atmospheres created by 3D, Daddy G, and Mushroom, in a compendium that provides an equitable exploration of what was created in just over a decade of activity.
P.S.: If you intend to purchase the album I recommend the "Limited Edition" which, besides having a fantastic package (the only pleasure left in the purchase, considering today we well know how the Web is a great supplier and how the prices are unappealing), also includes a dual disc with rare tracks on the audio side (also taken from the soundtrack of "Danny The Dog") and new tracks still letting us know that the fire continues to smolder beneath the ashes, while the DVD side contains all their videos, including the new, already mentioned, "Live With Me".
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