#397 - Massive Attack - Blue Lines (1991)
MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:
Released on April 8th of 1991 on Wild Bunch and Virgin Records and co-produced by the band with Johny Dollar and Cameron “Booga Bear” McVey this the debut of the Bristol, England Trip Hop pioneers.
Comprised of producers Robert “3D” Del Naja on vocal and keyboards, Grant “Daddy G” Marshall on vocals, Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles on keyboards, and rapper Adrian “Tricky” Thaws, the original group came together in 1988 from The Wild Bunch sound system, a multi-ethnic, underground, mobile, street-party, collective of DJs, producers, engineers, musicians, graffiti artists, and rappers that was created to bring the then new Hip Hop music to the people.
With Daddy G and Mushroom as the DJs and 3D as a rapper they threw huge parties in and around Bristol and at legendary local night club The Dug Out.
Other members of the collective were DJ and producer Nellee Hooper, who would go on to produce Massive Attack’s second album, and singer-songwriter and rapper Neneh Cherry.
While Nellee Hooper was producing Soul II Soul’s debut album, “Club Classics Vol.1”, Neneh and her soon-to-be-husband Cameron “Booga Bear” McVey had been writing and producing for her 1989 debut album, “Raw Like Sushi.”
3D and Nellee co-wrote the second single, “Manchild” with them and Mushroom did some programming on the record.
Meanwhile Daddy G created and independently released the first Massive Attack single, the Rufus and Chaka Khan cover, “Any Love” which was co-produced by Bristol group Smith & Mighty and featured vocalist Carlton McCarthy.
With those successes and with Neneh and Cameron encouraging and often bankrolling them 3D and Mushroom joined Daddy G in Massive Attack and they produced a re-recording of, “Any Love” now with vocalist Tony Bryan and got signed to Circa Records, a subsidiary of Virgin Records.
Inspired by concept albums, like those by Pink Floyd, P.I.L., Herbie Hancock, and Isaac Hayes, and using a mix of live music, sampling, programmed breakbeats, rapping, and featured vocalists, Massive Attack got to work on their debut with “Raw Like Sushi” producer Jonny Dollar, often at Neneh’s and Cameron’s house.
The process to make “Blue Lines” took about eight months and used some song ideas they’d created years before in The Wild Bunch.
As Daddy G said, “We were lazy Bristol twats. It was Neneh Cherry who kicked our arses and got us in the studio.”
In addition to rapper Tricky, who at that time was considered the fourth member, the album also featured British R&B and Soul singer/songwriter Shara Nelson, Jamaican Reggae singer/songwriter Horace Andy, British rapper Claude “Willie Wee” Williams, and British R&B and Soul vocalist Tony Bryan.
And as most of the songs were created from a DJ’s perspective with many uncredited samples and loops from existing records almost their entire list of studio equipment was turntables, a mixer, a drum machine, and a sampling synthesizer.
The music they and their Wild Bunch contemporaries were making became known as the “Bristol Sound” which you’ll remember from our Portishead episode.
That sound was American Hip-Hop filtered through the British underground scene. It was often more laidback, meditative, soulful, and owed a debt to the Jamaican Reggae Dub recording techniques.
This new genre would come to be called Trip Hop in 1994 yet “Blue Lines” is considered to be the first Trip Hop album.
So at the same time that America was enthralled in the Grunge music movement of Seattle the U.K. was building momentum with Trip Hop and the Bristol Sound.
And despite the popularity of the single this record didn’t sell particularly well when it was released.
However people were listening and it showed a few years later in the songs by Portishead, Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, Moby, Leftfield, DJ Shadow, Björk, Groove Armada, and Nightmares On Wax, to name a few.
And besides Massive Attack’s music their influence on production which included a core unit of producers with guest vocalists is still utilized today.
The group went on to put out four more albums and a bunch of EPs and other projects with various members leaving and returning with the exception of 3D.
Massive Attack has remained a driving force in new technology as well as using their recognition for political, social, and cultural causes.