Week 37: 50 Albums That Changed Music

[Swish]

This week's entry is for which I have no opinion because I've never heard it and the genre isn't one that I would generally consider my cup of tea. Massive Attack - Blue Lines (1991)

Obliterators of rap's boundaries, Massive Attack pioneered the cinematic trip hop movement. After graduating from one of Britain's premier sound systems, the Bristol-based Wild Bunch, Andrew 'Mushroom' Vowles and Grant 'Daddy G' Marshall joined forces with graffiti artist 3D. Massive Attack's debut LP spawned the unforgettable 'Unfinished Sympathy' and remains a modern classic. Without this...no Roots Manuva, no Dizzee. In fact, there would be no British urban music scene to speak of.

No Roots Manuva? No Dizzee? Egads man! Where would we be without those stellar purveyors of Brit rap?! What does a graffiti artist have to do with music? Is graffiti 'gangsta' art? And why do these guys always need a pseudonym/nickname?

Swish Daddy

[Davey]

Unfinished Symphony? Sounds like something from Schubert. Not that there's anything wrong with Schubert, but Unfinished Sympathy is one of the classics of the modern era. Monster record. Yeah, hip hop beats, but not many people since Brian Eno used the recording studio as an instrument as effectively as this crew. If nothing else, it gave Tricky the path and the freedom he needed to make the landmark Maxinquaye. And fueled a million fake innovations and recycled sounds, but Blue Lines must be pretty close to being the most original album of the last 20 years.

[Resident Loser]

And why do these guys always need a pseudonym/nickname? Swish Daddy

...along with always-up hooded sweatshirts, oversized pants, etc. it's part of the whole gangsta mentality...it's like yo...it's like an alias

jimHJJ(...I'll sit this one out...)

[nobody]

About time you posted this week...I was starting to wonder, and once tyou are done with this list, what else are we gonna talk about on here?


Anyway...on to the selection...

Massive Attack is one of my favorite modern groups. And, this was their frst one and a very unique record. Actually, I only heard it retroactively after hearing the follow-up, Protection, first.

What's interesting about their take on hip hop is a few things. First, it doesn't really even sound like hip hop as we in the US would define it. Play a Massive Attack record for a mainstream US hip hop artist and they aren't gonna think you're playing them a hip hop record. They use many of the same mixing and sampling techniques that are generally considered hip hop techniques, but they take them somewhere very different.

Also, while they do use rap, they use vocals in equal measure. They also bring out the Jamaican influences of rap and dub much further to the front than hip hop in the US. Then, they fuse more electronic/club like beats into the mix. So, what you end up with may have some hip hop as a starting point, but it sure don't sound like hip hop American style.

Now, maybe the group hasn't sold a ton of records in the US, a situation quite different I believe in their homeland. But, their influence, and the influence of the whole trip hop sorta stuff in general, has been massive. All that spooky, trippy electronic stuff playing in the background of countless movies and TV shows got a big part of its start here.

Oh..and yeah, British hip hop isn't exactly anything anyone on this side of the Atlantic gives a **** about, so none of those artists are likely to be missed by many here if they would disappear. But, I actually did just pull out soem Dizzee Rascal this weekend...not bad at all, really.

[-Jar-]

Unfinished Symphony? Sounds like something from Schubert. Not that there's anything wrong with Schubert, but Unfinished Sympathy is one of the classics of the modern era..

why does everyone get that wrong-o?

even a reviewer from Stereophile got it wrong.. idiot.

while I agree that album should have tons of props, personally, I don't like it as much as the next two.. but that's just me. "Five Man Army" rocks though.

-jar

[MindGoneHaywire]

...along with always-up hooded sweatshirts, oversized pants, etc. it's part of the whole gangsta mentality...it's like yo...it's like an alias

jimHJJ(...I'll sit this one out...)

What does trip-hop from more than 15 years ago have to do with gangsta rap?

As for this rec...I've never dug it all that much, but, that aside, was it influential enough, even in the UK, to deserve inclusion on this list?

I don't see it. I have to go back to the example of jam band music, which I don't much care for or about, and say that it's a genre that I can't see excluding from a list that does include trip-hop, which I do like. Massive Attack had a record more influential than, say, an early Grateful Dead record, even in the UK?

Strikes me as being almost as dumb as dumping food in the desert to rot.

[nobody]

Well, it's hard for me to be objective about the whoel jam band thing because I find it compeltely annoying. But, it has been a fairly big movement, especally for live shows. Still, not sure if those bands have crossed the Atlantic or not. And, more to the point, I don't think naming a band you feel may be more deserving necessarily means this one is not deserving.

I also think if you credit Massive Attack for the whole trip hop thing, which many do, that it;s not too much a steretch to say that as a whole that style has pliofititated as much as the jam band stuff, especially in terms of recordings and use in the public eye..movies, tv and such. Jam bands are a big live draw, but are any of them all that big of sellers or do they wield any real influence outside their own subculture?

For me, one of the bigger developments in music during the 90s was electronic-based music and Massive Attack and the trip hop deal in general were a big part of that, so I think they are a very deserving part of the list.

[Troy]

Strikes me as being almost as dumb as dumping food in the desert to rot.

[giggle]

Other than that I have nothing to say.

Master T, out.

[Swish]

why does everyone get that wrong-o?

even a reviewer from Stereophile got it wrong.. idiot.

while I agree that album should have tons of props, personally, I don't like it as much as the next two.. but that's just me. "Five Man Army" rocks though.

-jar

As usual, I was multi-tasking and, in my haste, didn't read it properly. They indeed had it down as "Unfinished Sympathy", so my bad.

Swish

[Swish]

About time you posted this week...I was starting to wonder, and once tyou are done with this list, what else are we gonna talk about on here?


Anyway...on to the selection...

Massive Attack is one of my favorite modern groups. And, this was their frst one and a very unique record. Actually, I only heard it retroactively after hearing the follow-up, Protection, first.

What's interesting about their take on hip hop is a few things. First, it doesn't really even sound like hip hop as we in the US would define it. Play a Massive Attack record for a mainstream US hip hop artist and they aren't gonna think you're playing them a hip hop record. They use many of the same mixing and sampling techniques that are generally considered hip hop techniques, but they take them somewhere very different.

Also, while they do use rap, they use vocals in equal measure. They also bring out the Jamaican influences of rap and dub much further to the front than hip hop in the US. Then, they fuse more electronic/club like beats into the mix. So, what you end up with may have some hip hop as a starting point, but it sure don't sound like hip hop American style.

Now, maybe the group hasn't sold a ton of records in the US, a situation quite different I believe in their homeland. But, their influence, and the influence of the whole trip hop sorta stuff in general, has been massive. All that spooky, trippy electronic stuff playing in the background of countless movies and TV shows got a big part of its start here.

Oh..and yeah, British hip hop isn't exactly anything anyone on this side of the Atlantic gives a **** about, so none of those artists are likely to be missed by many here if they would disappear. But, I actually did just pull out soem Dizzee Rascal this weekend...not bad at all, really.

...although I really never heard this record. I do have the Tricky cd that Davey mentioned, although I don't see it as all that incredible, but that may just be the style that doesn't do anything for me.

Swish

[Dusty Chalk]

Wonderful album, and it was one of the first and biggest of the trip-hop movement (although there was Curve doing stuff like Cherry, so not completely out of the blue), but probably the first full album of trip-hoppery, so yeah, I concur.

And: you idiots. This has nothing to do with Merkin rap, there's nothing gangsta about any of this stuff.

[3-LockBox]

zzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

[Resident Loser]

What does trip-hop from more than 15 years ago have to do with gangsta rap?

...ask swish...Was he referring to 15 yrs. ago or the current crop off wannabee's? I responded to his question re: pseudonyms/nicknames...although I'm fairly certain that if I actually gave a flyin' figaro enough to do so, a thread, a corollary connecting the two could be found...

As it is, I don't...

jimHJJ(...and aren't we all lucky...)