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Almost 20 years after their debut album Blue Lines was released, Massive Attack has released their fifth studio album, Heligoland.
The Bristol, England, natives created a type of experimental electronica that became known in the mid-to-late ’90s as trip hop — a genre that sounds very much like what you would expect from the name. Beside the dreamy, slow, downbeat and lazy qualities that became typical of that category of music, Massive Attack also incorporated elements of reggae, soul and guitar-oriented post punk. Massive Attack is perhaps best known for the 1998 album Mezzanine, which yielded the single “Teardrop,” the theme song for the Fox TV show House. Along with leading duo Grantley “Daddy G” Marshall and Robert “3D” Del Naja’s rapping, singing and sprechgesang — a sort of combination of the two — they feature various vocalists who help diversify their music even further without making it sound inconsistent.
In the past, members of Massive Attack have expressed disdain for the term “trip hop,” not wanting their music to be so easily labeled. One can only hope they can forgive the fact that humans process information with greater ease with the help of categorization. With the variety of styles present throughout this album and the group’s entire career, it’s almost a comfort to be able to say, “Well, it’s definitely trippy, and it’s sort of like hip hop: it’s trip hop.” That is not to say that they are not or cannot be anything else. Almost every song contains strong, salient beats, energetic synthesizers and looped, moody bass lines. It is cohesive without being homogeneous.
Heligoland opens impressively with “Pray for Rain,” featuring rolling drum samples, melancholy, jazzy piano and the soulful vocals of TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe. The gradual crescendo of distorted electric guitars adds emotion and timbre, leading into a synth-rich break that is difficult not to dance to. Two songs feature the soft, wavery voice of Martina Topley-Bird, who often collaborated with Massive Attack’s fellow trip hop pioneer, Tricky. She contributes a gentle, delicate feel to her share of the album. Other tracks are filled with hypnotic, gothic arrangements of vocals and guitars, but not to the somewhat frightening degree as in the previous two studio albums, Mezzanine and 100th Window.
Other strong points of Heligoland include “Girl I Love You,” and “Saturday Come Slow.” Horace Andy is featured on every Massive Attack release. In “Girl,” he provides reggae and soul-inspired singing, which combines surprisingly well with the mysterious, complex sampling which alternates between brass wind instruments and a simple beat. “Saturday Comes Slow,” on the other hand, has Damon Albarn from the ’90s band Blur and the trip rock and pop “band” the Gorillaz, of which Albarn is the only permanent member. His performance has a vulnerability to it that suits the simple lyrics: “Do you love me, or is there nothing there?” The guitar playing of Adrian Utley of Portishead even further enhances the song, yet another group of trip hop founders.
The album’s only imperfections are traces of monotony in some of the songs with repetitive sampling and 3D’s jaded-with-life lyrics and vocals, which fascinate and sadden as well. These flaws are not enough to detract immensely from the album’s haunting beauty. It is quite different from the more rap-oriented previous albums, but Massive Attack has often been known to alter their style with almost every studio effort. Heligoland was released Feb. 8 and the deluxe edition contains three remixes and an original song, “Fatalism.” If you like alternative hip hop or electronica, this album is highly recommended.
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