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Just thought I'd kick off ramblings on the new Massive Attack album if anyone was interested.
I'm really, really enjoying this. It at times seems a bit samey, but that's partly due to coherency, rather than repetiveness. Also, the fact that vocalists were assigned to songs after they were written might have something to do with it.
The easiest way to explain it is that if Protection is a sequel to Blue Lines (more in a similar vein, but also slightly different and progressive), then 100th Window is the sequel to Mezzanine. It is, in many ways, an easier listen that Mezzanine, which is one of the more troubling records I've tried to listen to for reasons I can't quite pin down. There's also a lot more sonic experimentation going on, I feel; Del Naja talked on MTV last night about how the fact that computers are so much more powerful means he can record more live stuff to process rather than being purely digital... and that hangs true; the guitar parts are a logical progression from Mezzanine and there's lots of other interesting stuff going on. And the drum/rythmn programming at times is superb.
Vocalists: Horace Andy's Horace Andy, occasionally processed, but I thought his voice was better fitted into the songs these days. Sinead O'Connor's great: What Your Soul Sings is easily my favourite track at the moment, and she's a really great voice to be used by Del Naja... 3D himself is back to the realms of singing/murmuring rather than rapping, and it's effective if not remarkable.
Points of note? Haven't fully sat down with the lyrics yet; most of them are good, though A Prayer for England is a bit too overtly political for my liking - but that doesn't stop me liking the song. Oh, and the CD is impossible to rip/copy as yet... evil-nasty copy protection going on there. And the final track descends into looped burbling to fill the disc up. Bizarre.
Basically: I'm really impressed. It's a solid addition to the canon and I can almost give them the four years it took to get it out (almost... it still shouldn't have taken that long). I'm interesting to see where they go and where further listens take me. Recommended, anyhow; £9 online I guess or £10 from your local friendly Fopp. Anyone else got anything to say? |
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