100th Window

Massive Attack: Mushroom, 3-D, Daddy G.
Additional personnel: Sinead O'Connor, Horace Andy, Robert Del Naja (vocals); Angelo Bruschini (guitar); Skaila Kanga (harp); Stuart Gordon (violin); Jon Harris (bass); Damon Reece (drums).
Producers: Robert Del Naja, Neil Davidge.
After a five-year gap, the follow-up to 1998's lauded MEZZANINE finds Massive Attack picking up right where they left off, as though no time had passed at all. The trademark mix of downtempo electronica, slithery trip-hop, darkly ambient atmospherics, and spacious dub production touches is still strongly in place, and this time around Sinead O'Connor fills the dreamy-chanteuse role played on MEZZANINE by Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser. The contrast of smooth, orchestral textures and wide, open sonic spaces with moody, paranoiac touches and creepy, downcast emotional vistas continues to make for some effective dynamics. The tempo picks up on the pulsing, insistent "A Prayer For England," but for the most part this is music to dream by, even if those dreams do turn out to be unsettling and subversive, full of strangely attractive uneasiness.

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