Massive Attack - Mezzanine POLL

I would need to listen again but my heart tells me "Group Four".

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

Man Next Door

angel with no hesitation

While I voted for Black Milk, I should've voted for Group Four.

i think "inertia creeps" might be my default favourite but again this is a very UNSEASONAL time to poll this album

blazing sunshine outside, this album doesn't exist right now. come back to me in january

my first thought was "Man Next Door" which seems wrong but i think it might be right. second thought was "Inertia Creeps" but i am gonna sleep on this.

It actually hadn't occurred to me to think of this album as particularly seasonal. It's a claustrophobic night album that codes as suffocating-warmth to me, but whether it's hot because it's summer or because all of the heaters are on isn't necessarily obvious.

oh it's definitely a night album, yes, or maybe one of those really grey miserable days, but it feels too bleak to be a summer night album (the ne plus ultra of those is the xx's debut for me)

but like every piece of music is weather-dependent for me and it's getting even worse as i get older

I'm with Tim in that I definitely get the stultifying warm nights atmosphere from this album rather than cold winter. Intrigued by Lex's weird seasonal-affected-synaesthesia (I know that term is completely not appropriate but I found it amusing).

I've always thought the opening four songs were amazing, but that the album tailed off after then; nothing bad, and not even a big drop in quality, just too much of the same atmosphere and sound palette, maybe. Voted for Risingson.

"Angel." I make allowances for the Fraser cuts these days.

This album is like a lover's hot breath against your neck.

Right now it's "Angel" because of the incredible intro. But I just as easily could go "Black Milk" or "Need a Little Love to Ease the Pain." This album is so unbelievably good. And then all of a sudden this band turned completely to shit. No one knows why.

Risingson for the wub.

I don't think it's entirely fair to say they turned completely to shit; certainly 100th Window was a strange album and I think threw people, but it had some really good moments amid it's strange, ambient-dub aesthetic. And I think Heligoland was surprisingly good, given that I expected pretty much nothing from it.

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.

Might have to go for Man Next Door as a perfect distillation of the album - dub + the Cure + paranoia. But then there's Risingson - I do love those rare tracks when 3D and Daddy G are rapping together.

I had to write a story recently about how this album was made and it's a marvel that it was finished at all. An utterly dysfunctional band at this point. There's an interesting quote from 3D at the time where he suggests that the security guard in Group Four was basically him - shunning friends and family to stay up all night working. Other fun facts: Mushroom allegedly tried to give an early version of Teardrop to Madonna and Angel started out as a cover of The Clash's Straight to Hell (with a Sex Gang Children sample) but they had to rewrite it when Horace refused to sing the word "hell".

man next door is awesome to sing along to

Hmmm... Maybe Risingson?

which one had the creepiest video from this album?

best MA video is still Karmacoma

LOL i always heard it as "fight" but now i'm never gonna be able to hear that song without hearing "fart", thanks yall

Angel started out as a cover of The Clash's Straight to Hell (with a Sex Gang Children sample) but they had to rewrite it when Horace refused to sing the word "hell".

tremendous

he won't sing hell but he'll sing fart.

I'd forgotten about the evil squelchy bassline that comes in at 2.33 in Risingson. We have a winner.

Other fun facts: Mushroom allegedly tried to give an early version of Teardrop to Madonna

Ahem.

voted for 'man next door', but i really can't recall the second half of the record that good - what's the one with the guitar crescendo around the middle?

"Dissolved Girl" probably. "Group Four" has a guitar crescendo at the end.

^^ just checked them quickly on youtube. it's 'dissolved girl' i was thinking about - never really cared that much about that tune, especially because of the guitar-bombast thing - same reason why i don't rate 'angel' as much as i should. i'm way more into massive attack when they're capturing the tension, not so much when it comes to releasing it in some sort of quasi-industrial frame.*

*which works in a live setting, tho.

Not a fan of this album but I love "exchange" with the Isaac Hayes sample. Proto Quiet Village/Seahawks?

"Dissolved Girl" isn't one of my faves on the album but I would have thought a lot of the point of the guitar dynamics there and elsewhere are about the tension/release dynamic as a whole rather than straight release - the way they let loose then rein it back in.

^^ i understand that, and i feel you're right. for me, the main problem is probably the cruchy guitar sound itself and - in 'dissolved girl's case - the way it gives me some 90's industrial vibes when combined with that trampling rhythm.

one of the things i love about 'man next door' - besides horace andy's vocals, obv - is the way the overall "heaviness" of it is more implicit/subdued that shoved in your face, or something like that...

sorry for my bad english, dunno if i'm making any sense here.

No that does make sense to me - I could definitely imagine finding their deployment of the dynamic heavyhanded.

when "angel" starts to "rock out", it gets really bad, imo. i think I'd like it better if it was more subtle with the "and here's the loud part" stuff. The big rock drums/distorted guitar is totally not necessary.

I half expect one of the dudes from 311 to pop in

At the time of release Angel's rock out actually felt subtle and elegant when compared with 'electro-rock' songs by say, Chemical Brothers or Prodigy, per example.

I know it's not an adequate comparison but I can't think of any albums from the time that sound like Mezzanine. Closest reference would be Maxinquaye and it feels like cheating.

Speaking about the music videos I prefer Karmacoma and Protection than the ones from Mezzanine, but the signing phetus baby of Teardrop still looks and feels mindblowing to me. Maybe I was too young at the time but that video made a heavy impression on me, a few days later I bought the album when I was around 13/14 just to listen to that song and it wasn't until a year later that I started actually listening to the rest of the songs. It changed my life. Sort of.

xxp I was there,, idk, it just sounds like bland alt rock to me

Dissolved Girl is much clunkier in its deployment of rock guitars that most of the rest of Mezzanine - there are guitars all over this album and they're mostly perfectly integrated within the record. Dissolved Girl just feels like a generic trip-hop record with a Beavis & Butthead riff awkwardly tacked on the end. There's a definite sag in the middle of the album but the beginning and end are so strong it doesn't matter too much.

Matt OTM - Dissolved Girl's the worst by far.

"Angel" just reminds me of slow-moving black limousines passing through while people in suits stand around

wtf "Dissovled Girl" is awesome

then again I'm the dude who always skips "Black Milk" so

not very daring, princess

i had no idea dissolved girl was so disliked! i feel like such a rebel now

I didn't vote for dissolved girl but it's one of my favorites.

I really liked it when the album came out, but I've really gone off it since.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Sounding stronger than ever IMHO. Could have voted for almost any track.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

house wins

RisingSon still a fave.

Hmm, interesting. Two people prefer the instrumental "Exchange" over the version with Horace Andy's vocals (?)

http://thequietus.com/articles/25572-massive-attack-mezzanine-xx1-live-show

I sorta forgot that Liz was credited on 2 songs other than just Teardrop.

Mad Professor remix album should be dope as fuck.

How has this album aged so well

One of those albums from a parallel universe, familiar and utterly foreign in equal measure.

The last new album I bought on cassette, and, lemme tell you, the bass KICKS in the car.

Xpost: yeah that’s a great description. you can sort of trace where it’s coming from, but at the same time it doesn’t sound like anything else from the era or the genre, hell not even inside Massive Attack’s discography. It was absolute mindblowing then, and it still sounds like it came from an alternate dimension.

Also yes! the bass KICKS hard. I think that’s the main factor that’s missing on 100th window for me, the bass doesn’t sound like a caged beast

yeah it’s a record which feels like it uses some kind of secret trickery to bypass normal limits and make everything sound HUGE. Countless times I’ve cranked “Inertia Creeps” for the sheer gut thrill. Truly apocalyptic album.

Something about that bass and the particular use of guitars (which famously pushed Mushroom out of the band) makes Mezzanine too invariably dark. Sure, it’s a classic album, but I find it a bit hard to listen too in full. IMO Heligoland offers a lot more variety.

By the way, what ever happened to Mushroom after this album? Did he still make music, or is he purely living off royalties for their classic 90s tunes?

Looking at Discogs there seem to be no credits for him post Mezzanine aside from compilation tracks etc.

prolly Banksy

Always wanted to point out to Horace Andy that the "man who lives next door" is by definition "in my neighbourhood", so there is no need to keep specifying the geographical location of the man in the song lyrics.

It's theoretically possible that Horace lives on a many-acred estate and his next-door neighbour lives over a mile away i.e. not in the singer's perceived immediate neighbourhood. But if that's the case, it would seem churlish to complain about the noise made by the noise made the neighbour unless the singer has bat-like hearing. And if Horace can hear pots and pans banging against his wall, then the (non-neighbourhood) man next door would need to have the javelin skills of an Olympian to reach the wall of Horace's house from that distance, unless he's using remote-controlled kitchenware.

It's emphasising that it's a first person story. Not *your* neighbourhood or another character's neighbourhood.

the man may live next door, but he's in a different HOA

anyway andy's version of that song on this album is chilling (as in horror movie "chilling", the bad way)

I always assumed it was about Black experience in Britain, unprovoked hostility, never feeling safe, underscored by a white English band muttering “drip drip drip drip”.

How has this album aged so well

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, July 10, 2023 12:53 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Extremely 1998 yet extremely timeless.

Yeah this version of “man next door” gives horror movie vibes. Is the neighbor a serial killer? What is he building in there?

It was my least favorite song when I first heard the album - I do loved those massive drums - but it eventually grew on me. Horace Andy vocals are an acquired taste and something felt off about the nursery rhyme melody, but now I see it fits with the paranoid and tense atmosphere throughout the album and I now know I was a fool regarding Horace Andy’s vocals.

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

It was my least favorite song when I first heard the album

same for me, seemed weirdly out of place on the album, also didn't know it was a cover. These days it might be my favourite track on the album (outside of Group Four maybe).

Xpost: it’s weird that Horace Andy vocals annoyed me on “man next door” when I loved them on “angel”.

And yeah Group Four and Man Next Door are definite highlights nowadays for me too.

I think the only track I could do without is “exchange” which definitely does not need to be in there twice. I think it was one of the few Mushroom contributions to Mezzanine and you can tell based on that one, why he wasn’t too keen on the path they were taking with this one. Dude just wanted to keep making sexy, chill beats.

Think it works nicely as a closer after the very dark "Group Four", not as sold on it after "Inertia Creeps".

The title track took me longest to warm up to and it's probably still my least favorite track (though not a bad one)

In my head the lyric to "Man Next Door" is "Fear is a man that lives next door, in my neighborhood" - which, but for being incorrect, would make the psycho/socio/political edge to the song much more explicit.

that's how I've heard it

Apparently the correct lyric is "There is a man that lives next door..."

'scuse me while I kiss this guy

Vowels, whose attachment to No Don't had grown strong, believed it needed a soul vocalist. Marshall and Del Naja, however, imagined someone entirely different: John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats.

lol

Wow they did a bunch of covers on that Mezzanine tour from 4-5 years ago including '10.15 Saturday Night' and 'Bela Lugosi's Dead'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_lBQ6KZKw

Yeah it was amazing

does anyone know what they were going for with the straight-forward "levels" cover leading into "group four"

all the other tracks they covered except "bela lugosi's dead" (at least as far as i know, maybe it's in there somewhere) were sampled on mezzanine

Dissolved Girl remains my favourite, by a mile.

Black Milk for me even after hearing the (also excellent) Manfred Mann track it reappropriates wholesale but the title track getting 0 votes just seems ludicrous (especially compared to Inertia Creeps getting 9).

what DJP said re: the anniversary tour

Inertia Creeps is great what’s wrong with its rank?

"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