Massive Attack
Mezzanine

Close your eyes. Imagine running your finger over the globe, pointing to a destination, and in that very moment finding yourself sucked into the place. Feel the climate, see the colors, the streets, the streams, hear the sound of nature, notice the smell of the stuffy air, the invincible challenge of continental frost. Imagine the world watching you, at least as much as you watch it where you've landed almost by chance; that someone follows your steps, anticipates them with thought, studies the paths, reads inside you. With slow and deep strides and with a soft step, the air penetrates you and sees what you are made of, becomes one with you, and goes to seek what cannot be spoken, that has no word but only invisible substance, a viscous liquid that you cannot show in the light of day, that erupts at night, when it is incredibly complicated to look at each other, extremely simple for complex and obscured personality traits to emerge. It is a voice that speaks, an ancient voice that belongs to the whole world, which returns dignity to that substance in the form of sound. It slowly conquers you, grabs you by the hips, and possesses you in an embrace that lasts all night, for an entire era.

All this has become music, sound, tribal and enveloping rhythms, suspended and intense harmonic solutions, a mix of new york hip hop, ambient, electronic music, dub, reggae, psychedelic music, jazz, funk, and soul. In a single word Trip hop, a genre that brings together hip hop with the idea of a mental journey, waves that mesh with an indefatigable groove, environments that recognize and meld into an unexplored universe, an assemblage of diverse genres, all shaped into a sound flow that is ever gentle and aggressive, overwhelming, fascinating and sharp, violent in its voluptuous delicacy. It is in Bristol that this incredible genre is born, it is in the Nineties that it establishes itself with Massive Attack in 1987, who along with Tricky, Portishead, and Morcheeba represent the story of this genre, going back to retrieve retro and lo-fi sounds also in an orchestral key.

In the album, there are tracks that are history and set a standard for the entire world of electronica and beyond. The journey begins with Angel, a puma with an incredible voice named Horace Andy, who advances slowly toward his prey, imploding in an expansive beat enriched with a distorted guitar but then follows its steps again, turns its back, and closes up, as if nothing ever happened; a prelude to the white lights of Risingson, a true masterpiece that opens the dance to the ethereal Teardrop, a rare pearl of electronic music interpreted by the angelic voice of Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins) that breaks the dark atmosphere of the record. But this sweetness is just a patina that obscures the gaze, which is freed with the arrival of Inertia Creeps, a tale of an ancient mystery never revealed, a journey into the darkness of a faraway land that echoes tribal rhythms and dub carpets; it seems that at the end of the tunnel rest can be found in Exchange, the light point of the record, a plucked bass that underlies harmonies suspended between alternating fade outs and fade ins, compressors and filters with an analog and retro flavor, an stretching more than deserved. Sara Jay brings it all back with Dissolved girl and Robert "3D" Del Naja, Grant "Daddy G" Marshall and Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles continue the journey with Man next door again with Horace Andy, with Mezzanine that gives the album its title, while Fraser's sweet voice returns on Black Milk and Group Four.

The introspective, multicultural, powerful journey is resolved with the brilliant return to shore of (Exchange) whose ivory coasts glimmered in the distance, and shone in contrast with the pitch-black sand retracing the footprints left along the path of Mezzanine, a tale of the eternity enjoyed by electronic music of a certain level, of a certain depth and thickness unmatched to this day.