20: Massive Attack
Album: Heligoland
Genre: Trip-Hop
Label: Virgin
Massive Attack are the O.G. of Trip-Hop. Practically having invented the genre in the 90’s, the band’s melding of Hip-Hop influenced delivery with electronica backed beats has become something of an institution of reliable synthetic music. While the group’s line-up has had slight shifts over their two decades+ of existence (Tricky was a member once upon a time,) the core duo of Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall has remained intact and they continue to produce heady albums of chilled out soundscapes that put their imitators to shame. Heligoland is their first album in 7 years and the first to feature the core duo working together again since 1998’s dark opus of Mezzanine. While their previous album, 100th Window was good, it’s failing was that it shed what warmth there was in Mezzanine for an icy, almost crystalline sound that communicated a void of human contact, probably due to the fact that Del Naja produced the album without the help of Marshall.
Heligoland is far from the cold loneliness of 100th Window and is, in a way, the opposite side of the coin from Mezzanine: where that album was a shadowy series of corridors, Heligoland might as well be broad daylight, filled with the light of the sun and warm breezes rather than the artificial heat of Mezzanine. Heligoland is, in fact, Massive Attack’s most organic sounding album since Blue Lines, their debut. I could fault this album for not being able to top Mezzanine, but really, I wasn’t expecting it to do so. Does it stand up on it’s own though? Certainly. Over the course of 10 songs, Massive Attack creates an engagingly trippy album that is abound with catchy sytnhs and gorgeous vocals.
Heligoland is Massive Attack’s most guest heavy album to date, featuring vocal contributions from the likes of Tunde Adebimpe (of TV on the Radio fame,) Martina Topley-Bird, and even Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn on the mournful “Saturday Come Slow.” However, despite the plethora of famous folks guesting on this album, the two best songs come from the core Massive Attack camp. The first of these two is the drivingly bass powered “Girl I Love You” which features the incomparable Reggae singer Horace Andy, Massive attack’s oldest and most reliable vocalist. While not an official member of the band, Andy has been singing with Massive Attack on every album since the beginning and he’s still their most effective voice. The song features a rumbling bass line backed by deep, resonant big band horn blasts that give the song a decidedly epic feel.
However, It is the final song on the album that takes home the prize for best overall track. “Atlas Air” features the cool, narcotized vocals of Robert Del Naja, Massive Attack co-founder and primary vocalist/programmer, over a progressively growing and morphing beat, which while beginning simply enough with just alternating stomping percussion, slowly becomes, through it’s seven+ minute length, a transcendental blitz of grooving, rhythmic synth lines that will have you tapping your foot and nodding your whole body in no time. To wrap up, if you’re a fan of Trip-Hop you need this record. If you like electronic music, you need this record. If you like Massive Attack, don’t expect a better piece than Mezzanine, but still cop this record. That’s all.
Top Tracks: “Girl I Love You” & “Atlas Air.”
19: Harvey Milk
Album: A Small Turn Of Human Kindness
Genre: Sludge Metal
Label: Hydra Head
Brief preface: This is likely the most challenging album I’ll be covering on the Top 20 list. It is not easy or light listening and if you are afraid of the dark void that eats away at your soul every day, pushing you ever closer to the edge of this mortal coil, then you should probably stop reading now. However. If you like Sludge Metal, the dark void that eats away at your soul every day and my writing, then by all means, keep reading.
Athens, Georgia’s Harvey Milk are no stranger to tackling subjects of misery and mortality in their music. The Sludge Metal trio’s previous work, Life… The Best Game In Town dealt closely with the fear of death and it’s inevitability, all the while creating slamming noise-ridden Sludge music, which they’ve become famous for. But the odd truth of Life… is that Creston Spires, Harvey Milk’s unassuming looking front man, considers it to be their worst work to date. Now, personally, I find that Life… is a truly excellent album and also the album that got me into the band. But that aside, Life… is Harvey Milk’s pop album. The songs are contained to themselves, they have noticeable hooks, even rough melodies at times and all of them feature blistering guitar solos that cause the listener to keep in mind Harvey Milk’s classic rock roots. A Small Turn Of Human Kindness on the other hand, is about as far from pop in structure and sound as the band’s sound is from the sound of Athens, Georgia’s most well known musical export: R.E.M.
A Small Turn Of Human Kindness clocks in at roughly 37 minutes in length, features seven tracks all of which are less individual songs and more individual movements in the overall composition of the piece. The album flows together so seamlessly that it is hard to tell where tracks end and begin, and while none of the tracks can really stand on their own, when experienced as a whole, the albums arch and execution becomes more powerful than anything the band has constructed before. Whereas Life… was a sturdy collection of Harvey Milk’s various styles and ranges, A Small Turn focuses into one truncated path, that of the slow tempoed, grinding engine that is their forte. The music has taken on an intensely minimalistic approach, with the dirge-like chords and molasses paced drumming dragging through the album like a body through the muck. That, coupled with Creston Spires’ anguished vocals, makes for a truly harrowing listening. All to drive the concept of the album home.
The band has always had a sense of humor about themselves before now, and rightly so: Metal is an inherently ridiculous genre sometimes. But on A Small Turn, all humor and self-deprecation is abandoned in favor of lyrics and atmosphere so bleak and colorless that this might as well be a Black Metal album. It’s not melodramatic or campy kind of seriousness; it’s grim and stone-faced, like there’s been a death in the family. Appropriate too, as the albums story is that of the events leading up to a suicide. The six tracks prior to the finale all build upon each other, revealing new turns and shifts in the grim story until we reach the brutal conclusion of “I Did Not Call Out” in which, amid devastating crashing riffs, Spires’ wounded water buffalo cries describes the suicide itself and how he has done nothing to prevent it.
Sonically speaking, this is a horror movie of the first rate. Not a loony monster movie or something from the Saw series, but a tale of the darkest parts of the human condition, which leaves you feeling cold and alone. Like Nine Inch Nails’ suicide opera, The Downward Spiral before it, this album is grimy, scary and perfectly constructed. It is free of irony and utterly disturbing to listen to. It’s also one of the finest things Harvey Milk has ever set to record and one of the best Metal albums from last year. I’d be extremely gentle with this album. It is not for the feint of heart. But if you’re a fan of challenging Sludge music, then you’ll like this as I do.
Top Tracks: Not Applicable. The nature of the album negates my ability to decide on individual tracks to single out. For your listening pleasure, I have included two of my favorite tracks from Harvey Milk’s previous album, Life… The Best Game In Town.
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