O2 Academy Brixton, London
A visual backdrop that flashes refugee statistics as well as prosaic web searches echoes a musical offering that shifts from spiky rap to blunted sensuality
Being synonymous with a genre can be a curse, trapping you in the amber of the public imagination. But Massive Attack, who defined the moody trip-hop sound of the 90s, have spent the last two decades steadfastly refusing to become a museum piece. The band seemed to have turned down a sonic dead end with 2003’s weak 100th Window, but have recently reversed back out with the more organic Heligoland and new EP Ritual Spirit, on which this set leans.
There is plenty of middling material here. Martina Topley-Bird, singing on a number of tracks, is too nuanced and jazzy to spar with the band’s cacophony, and giving Teardrop a blowsy sensuality is a mistake. Paradise Circus (aka the theme from Luther) has an insufferable tiptoeing skank to it – like their peers Portishead, Massive Attack always threatened to scratch your coffee table, but here they sit politely amid the interiors magazines. Ritual Spirit’s title track is beautifully sung by Azekel and its beat – where the Be My Baby drum fill meets the Diwali riddim – is typically cosmopolitan, but the song lacks structure; the same problem plagues He Needs Me, a tribal banger with Young Fathers that blusters instead of breathes. Robert Del Naja’s singing badly derails Splitting the Atom, as he aims for Tom Waits but ends up an X Factor audition reject.
Related: Massive Attack: ‘There was always someone out there ready to bash your head in’
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
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