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 sensualityBeing synonymous with a genre can be a curse, trapping you in the amber of the public imagination. But Massive Attack, or who defined the morose (gloomy or sullen) trip-hop sound of the 90s,own spent the final two decades steadfastly refusing to become a museum piece. The band seemed to own turned down a sonic dead end with 2003’s feeble 100th Window, but own recently reversed back out with the more biological Heligoland and new EP Ritual Spirit, and 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, and 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.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com