The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Massive Attack · produced by Massive Attack and Jonny Dollar · Wild Bunch Records through Circa, a Virgin imprint · nine tracks, about forty-five minutes
Mode
Music built from other people’s records and played back slowed: hip hop’s break, dub’s low end, soul and jazz-funk sources, a string section over a breakbeat
Mythos
The guardian of her own against the city’s harm; the band of men at rest; the great wheel that turns while some labour and others rest
Phase
Nine tracks; a warning at the opening, the crew’s statement third, the height at the centre, a hymn at the close
Presentation
Album; nine tracks, about forty-five minutes; three members and four guest voices, no track sung by a member of the group alone; one cover
Register
Slow, dry beats placed behind the voice, a heavy warm low end, room around every part; a woman’s voice of warning, a high trembling tenor, laconic English rap
Scale
One city at the end of the 1980s, its street, its crew and its couples, and once the turning world
Governing Proposition
Three men from a Bristol sound system and their guests take hip hop’s beat, dub’s weight and soul’s voice, slow them until they are no longer for dancing and pass the track from voice to voice with no singer in front: a record that discloses a British city whose culture is Jamaican, American and English at once, watchful rather than festive, and that rises once, in Unfinished Sympathy, to a public grief made out of a private one.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a slow breakbeat and a borrowed jazz bassline, and the bassline tightens as the track goes on. Over it a woman’s voice warns and a man’s half-spoken verse answers, two voices sharing one track. Shara Nelson sings of a person who will protect what is hers in a city where harm is ordinary, and who will “sure as hell retaliate”. The track sets the record’s law at once: a beat slowed below the dance floor, a source taken from another record and remade, a voice set in space, and a temper of watchfulness rather than celebration.
Massive Attack released the album in Britain in April 1991, on Wild Bunch Records through Circa, a Virgin imprint. The group were then Robert Del Naja (3D), Grant Marshall (Daddy G) and Andrew Vowles (Mushroom), out of the Bristol sound system the Wild Bunch, and they produced the record with Jonny Dollar. Four guest voices carry much of it: Shara Nelson, Horace Andy, Tony Bryan and Adrian Thaws, called Tricky, not yet a solo artist. Daydreaming had come out as a single in 1990; Unfinished Sympathy, first issued under the name “Massive” during the Gulf War, and Safe from Harm followed in 1991.
Nine tracks, about forty-five minutes. Nelson leads four, Horace Andy two, the rappers lead or share four, Tony Bryan one, and no track is sung by a member of the group alone. One is a cover, William DeVaughn’s Be Thankful for What You’ve Got, from 1974. The whole runs well below the dance tempo of its year. The singles are evidence of the record’s presence; the album as first released, in its original sequence, is the work, and the remix and remaster the group made in 2012 is later context.
Movement II
The title track is the crew’s plain statement. Three voices, 3D, Tricky and Daddy G, pass the line between them at a walking pace, and none of them is a singer in front of a band. It is mood and swagger, and the raps are mostly self-description; but the form is the point. The record is a sound-system session made into an album: no fixed singer, voices passing the track among a crew and its guests, the music built from other people’s records and played back slowed.
That form is what the record knows. A city’s culture is a collage, Jamaican, American and English at once, and here many voices and many sources are made one by a law of tempo and space rather than by a frontman. Recast as a band record with one singer, the claim would be gone. The sequence is shaped to it: the warning of Safe from Harm, the sweetness of One Love, the crew at rest in Blue Lines, the height at the centre, the wheel at the close. Only the middle is loosely ordered, and Daydreaming and Lately lie side by side in one mode.
The law holds across a wide range. The full string section of Unfinished Sympathy and the dub-weighted crew rap of Five Man Army obey the same physics: a slowed break, a deep low end, space around the voice, a source borrowed and remade. So do a 1974 soul cover, Horace Andy’s reggae tenor and a hymn. The coherence is a producer’s ear, strong and a little narrow, and a few tracks, Be Thankful above all, obey it by treatment rather than by necessity. The beat stays slow from first to last, so slow that it is no longer for dancing, and that slowness is the room the record lives in.
Movement III
The sixth track stands at the centre and is the record’s summit. Strings enter over a hard breakbeat, and Shara Nelson’s voice climbs against them. It is a private grief given public scale, and when the beat falls away the long string coda carries on without it. The strings are written for the track, not laid over it, and the meeting of a concert hall’s section with a break, made without irony, is the boldest stroke of its turn. Nelson carries it with plain force.
The song states one thing plainly, incompleteness in love: “soul without a mind”. It is one of the few places where the record articulates a condition rather than rendering a mood, with Safe from Harm and the closing hymn. The rest discloses through sound, and the sound is credited as fully as words: a British city at the end of the 1980s, its culture mixed and its temper watchful, made by people who live among records. But the raps are mostly drift and self-description, the love songs are sketched, and what the record gives is more often the mood of a place than a meaning stated about it.
The making is exact in its space. The low end is heavy and warm, the beats dry and placed behind the voice, and room is left around each part so that the slowness reads as poise, not emptiness. The sources are judged closely, a jazz bassline made into a threat, a borrowed figure made into a lullaby, and Horace Andy’s fragile tenor is placed with care. The faults fall across a share of the record: the raps of 3D and Daddy G are limited in flow and diction, laconic by design but often thin, and the programming of Daydreaming and Lately is plainer than what it carries. Unfinished Sympathy is the track that keeps yielding on return, and the record is returned to partly for it.
Movement IV
The fourth track is a gentle cover of a 1974 soul song, sung by Tony Bryan, and it shows the inheritance plainly. The record came out of a Bristol sound system and what it played: American hip hop and its sampling, Jamaican reggae and dub, American soul and jazz-funk on record. In London, Soul II Soul’s Club Classics Vol. One (1989) had already set soul singing over a slowed hip hop beat, with a sound-system crew as author. Much of the bet had been placed before this record was made.
The turn is still real. The beat goes further down, below the dance floor; the album becomes a thing for listening at home and at night; English voices rap in their own accent and at their own unhurried pace; a string section sits over a breakbeat. It was a debut by a collective with no lead singer and no live band, against dance music that grew faster every month. But the means were proven, and the swerve is a slowing and a darkening, made with great judgment, more than a new language. The cover is where the subtractive test bites first: it restates the inheritance without turning it, as Lately doubles Daydreaming’s mode and Five Man Army runs long.
The reach is larger than the turn. The sound the press called trip hop followed directly, in Bristol first: Portishead’s Dummy in 1994 and Tricky’s Maxinquaye in 1995, the second by a voice of this record. Beyond Bristol, the slowed, sample-built records of the decade’s middle years, from Mo’ Wax and others, moved its way, and Unfinished Sympathy became a model for strings over a break in British pop. The genre it opened was soon a commodity and faded, and its reach outside Britain was narrower. The group’s own Mezzanine (8.4 here) is the better made and higher record; the redirection belongs to this one.
Movement V
The record closes on Horace Andy’s high, trembling voice over a slow swell, a hymn in fact as well as in title. Its image is the record’s one archetype: the great wheel, the turning earth and the wheel of fortune at once, under which one man struggles while another rests. Here the city’s watchfulness turns outward onto the world, and the record lifts at its end. Andy had sung the second track, One Love, whose title carries Jamaica’s song of union and is the record’s quieter beauty in the same voice.
The wheel comes as a hymn’s image, not as a structure the album bears. Safe from Harm summons a guardian against the city’s threat, Five Man Army gestures toward a war film’s band of men, and the crew of the title track is that band at rest; but the city is never named in the words, few figures have faces, and the archetypes are evoked by title and image more than built. What the record holds is the city, its street and its crew, consciousness in Daydreaming, the couple in Unfinished Sympathy and Lately, and, in this last track, a world in which some labour and others rest. The family, labour, history and the state are absent or only implied.
Thirty-five years have tested it. The recording survives as released and has stayed in print; Unfinished Sympathy has stayed in broadcast for three decades and more, and the album is placed high whenever British albums are counted. Presence is narrower outside Britain and is carried more by one track than by the album heard whole, and the raps and some of the drum programming are of 1991, though the slowed tempo and the soul and string sources have aged little. It stands level with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (8.1 here), whose words disclose and encompass more, and above Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (7.8), another record of its moment made for listening at home rather than on the floor.
Act III · The Twelve
Nine tracks in about forty-five minutes, and the subtractive test finds a core it cannot touch and a margin it can. Safe from Harm must open: it sets the law at once, a slow breakbeat under a borrowed jazz bassline, a woman’s voice of warning and a man’s half-spoken verse sharing one track. Unfinished Sympathy must stand at the centre as the height, and Hymn of the Big Wheel must close, turning the city’s watchfulness out onto the world. Blue Lines is required as the crew’s plain statement. The test bites in three places: Be Thankful for What You’ve Got restates the soul inheritance without turning it, Lately adds little to Daydreaming in the same mode, and Five Man Army runs long for what it does.
Score: 8.0 / 10
What can be stated is real: a British city at the end of the 1980s whose culture is Jamaican, American and English at once, made by people who live among records and sound systems, and whose temper is watchful rather than festive. The sound discloses it as fully as words would: hip hop’s beat slowed until it stops being for dancing, dub’s low end, soul’s voice, all held at a walking pace. Safe from Harm states one condition plainly, a woman who will “sure as hell retaliate” where harm is ordinary; Unfinished Sympathy states incompleteness in love, “soul without a mind”. What holds the axis: the raps are mostly self-description and drift, the love songs are sketched, and much of what is given is the mood of a place more than a meaning articulated about it.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The record rises rarely, but once to real height. Unfinished Sympathy is the summit: the strings enter over a hard breakbeat and Shara Nelson’s voice climbs against them, a public grief made out of a private one, and the long string coda leaves the beat behind. Safe from Harm reaches a dread of its own as the bassline tightens under Nelson’s chorus. Hymn of the Big Wheel lifts at the close, Horace Andy’s high, trembling voice over a slow swell, a hymn in fact as well as in title, and One Love has a quieter beauty in the same voice. The rest is cool by design: Blue Lines and Five Man Army are mood and swagger, Daydreaming and Lately lovely without height. One summit, two high points and a long plateau.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Myth is evoked in places and built nowhere. The strongest figure comes in the closing track: the great wheel, at once the turning earth and the wheel of fortune, under which one man struggles while another rests. It is the record’s one archetype, and it arrives as a hymn’s image, not as a structure the album bears. Safe from Harm summons the guardian of her own against the city’s threat; One Love borrows a title that carries Jamaica’s song of union; Five Man Army gestures toward a war film’s band of men, and the crew of the title track is that band seen at rest. What holds the axis low is that the particular is withheld: the city is never named in the words, few figures have faces, and the archetypes are evoked by title and image more than built by the sequence.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The inheritance is the Bristol sound system and what it played: American hip hop and its sampling, Jamaican reggae and dub, American soul and jazz-funk on record, and the London precedent of Soul II Soul, whose Club Classics Vol. One (1989) had already set soul singing over a slowed hip hop beat with a sound-system crew as author. The turn is real. The beat goes further down, below the dance floor; the album becomes a thing for listening at home and at night; English voices rap in their own accent at their own unhurried pace; a full string section sits over a breakbeat without irony. The stake was a debut by a collective with no lead singer and no live band. What holds it: Soul II Soul had placed most of the bet, and the swerve is a slowing and a darkening more than a new language.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Change the form and part of what the record knows is lost. Its form is the sound-system session made into an album: no fixed singer, voices passing the track among a crew and its guests, the music built from other people’s records and played back slowed. That form is the knowledge, a city’s culture as collage, many voices and many sources made one by a law of tempo and space rather than by a frontman. Recast as a band record with one singer, the claim is gone. The sequence is counted here, once: the warning of Safe from Harm, the sweetness of One Love, the crew at rest in Blue Lines, the height at the centre, the wheel at the close. What holds it: the middle is loosely ordered, and Daydreaming and Lately lie side by side in one mode.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Evidence over thirty-five years. The record has been returned to steadily: placed in the lists of its decade and of British albums, written about as the founding record of its city’s sound, reissued, remixed and remastered by the group itself in 2012, and studied for its samples, each layer traced to a source. The yield on return is real in the making: the placement of parts in the mix, the space left around the voices, the way the bass carries the harmony. The yield in meaning is thinner. The words do not open further with time, and the raps and the slighter songs are heard through rather than into. Unfinished Sympathy is the track that keeps yielding, and the record is returned to partly for it: below the depth of Remain in Light, which stands at 8.5 on this axis, above a record admired and left.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The field is the British and American album of the turn of the 1990s where hip hop, dance music and soul meet. The intrinsic force is real: the record showed that the sample-built track could carry a whole album of slow, dark, interior music for listening, and that a British crew could speak in its own voice over it; it joined hip hop, dub and soul in one sound, with the strings of the concert hall at its height. Part of that force is shared with Soul II Soul. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the sound the press called trip hop followed directly, in Bristol first, in Portishead’s Dummy (1994) and Tricky’s Maxinquaye (1995), the second by a voice of this record; the slowed, sample-built records of the decade’s middle years, from Mo’ Wax and others, moved its way; and Unfinished Sympathy became a model for strings over a break. The genre was soon a commodity and faded, and the reach outside Britain was narrower.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Survival is weighed over thirty-five years, on form, presence and fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as released and has stayed in print throughout. Presence in Britain is wide and continuous: Unfinished Sympathy has stayed in broadcast and in common use for more than three decades, and the album is placed high whenever British albums are counted. Two charges hold the figure at its step. Presence is narrower outside Britain and is carried more by one track than by the album heard whole. And the fabric is partly fixed to its moment: the raps, in their flow and phrasing, are the surface most of 1991, and some drum programming is of its year, though the slowed tempo and the soul and string sources have aged little.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, and in places load-bearing. The production is exact in its space: the low end heavy and warm, the beats dry and placed behind the voice, room left around each part so that the slowness reads as poise, not emptiness. The sources are judged closely: a jazz bassline made into a threat in Safe from Harm, a borrowed figure made into a lullaby in Daydreaming. The strings on Unfinished Sympathy are written for the track, not laid over it. Nelson’s voice carries the highest moments with plain force, and Horace Andy’s fragile tenor is placed with care. The faults fall across a share of the record: the raps are limited in flow and diction, laconic by design but often thin; Be Thankful is slight; Five Man Army’s arrangement idles; the programming of Daydreaming and Lately is plainer than what it carries.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the full string section and Nelson’s voice in Unfinished Sympathy, and the dub-weighted crew rap of Five Man Army. One law governs both: a slowed break, a deep low end, space around the voice, a source borrowed and remade. The same law takes in a 1974 soul cover, Horace Andy’s reggae tenor, a jazz-funk bassline and a hymn. The range is wide, soul, rap, reggae, string elegy, and the law holds across it, which is the record’s chief achievement. What holds the figure: the law is a sound more than a structure, a few tracks, Be Thankful above all, obey it by treatment rather than by necessity, and the coherence is that of a producer’s ear, strong and a little narrow.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. The city is held throughout, through sound more than words: the street and its threat in Safe from Harm, the crew in Blue Lines and Five Man Army. Consciousness is held in Daydreaming and in the inwardness of the whole. The couple is held in Unfinished Sympathy and Lately. The world and its inequality enter in Hymn of the Big Wheel, the turning earth with the struggle of some and the ease of others, and the sacred is glimpsed in the hymn and in One Love’s union. Labour, the family, history and the state are absent, or implied only by the city’s mixture of peoples. One sound joins what is there, but the orders are few and more glimpsed than held, and that holds the figure lowest.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.1 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
Pressure on Tradition at 8.6, then The Imperishable at 8.5, The Made and The Inner Law at 8.4. A record that showed a sample-built album could carry slow, dark music for listening, and that a British crew could speak over it in its own voice, followed directly by the Bristol records of the middle 1990s; a presence in Britain unbroken for three decades and more; a production exact in its space, and one law of tempo, low end and room that holds strings, rap, reggae, soul and a hymn.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: the city, the crew, consciousness and the couple are held, the world glimpsed in the closing hymn, and labour, the family, history and the state are absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 7.2 and The Unconcealment at 7.9: the wheel, the guardian and the band of men are evoked by title and image and built by no sequence, and the city the record discloses is given more as a mood than as a meaning articulated.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.0 against a threshold of 7.5, by five tenths. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.3, The Made at 8.4, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on three of five: Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5 and The Imperishable meets it exactly at 8.5, but The Swerve at 8.3 falls two tenths short, The Unconcealment at 7.9 six tenths short and The Archetypal Deep at 7.2 short by 1.3, the turn made along a path another crew had opened, the disclosure chiefly of a city’s mood and the myth evoked rather than built. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.2, below 7.5; no other axis it counts falls below 7.9, The Unconcealment. The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 96.9, an average of 8.075 that displays 8.1, in Tier IV, a tenth above the 8.0 at which it begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released in Britain in April 1991 by Wild Bunch Records through Circa, nine tracks in running order, about forty-five minutes, ending with Hymn of the Big Wheel; produced by Massive Attack and Jonny Dollar; judged from knowledge of the recording, its sound and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and the running time is approximate. The nine-track release is the object; the singles of 1990 and 1991 are evidence of its presence, and the group’s remix and remaster of 2012 is later context and is not scored. Songs are cited by title. Words are quoted only where they are certain, from Safe from Harm and Unfinished Sympathy, and never beyond four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the exact day of release, an executive producer’s part, the arranger of the strings on Unfinished Sympathy, the recordings sampled on each track, a co-writer of the closing track, the running times of single tracks, the measured tempos, the division of the sides and the chart positions, are not given.